The article I enjoyed most was titled Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees. A huge reason why I am a fan of this is due to the fact I love Chinese food. Reading about Kung Pao Chicken really made my mouth water and made me begin to crave Chinese food. I enjoyed looking at pictures of what the chicken looks like and then being able to see how it is made. My favorite out of class read came when I first entered the class and decided I would try to get ahead so I googled random food articles. I landed on http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-11439-round-two.html and I was drawn to it because I love a nice, juicy steak. The article gave me an interesting perspective on a specific restaurant and their steak.

Food Tasting

 I decided to make my genre on something that I find very interesting… Videos. For my audience to be interested as well, I want to go in depth with my videos by watching food tasting. I am choosing this genre because I know my audience and myself will enjoy it. These videos are shared on YouTube by various accounts and are very popular amongst our world.

Videos range in length as I have seen some being as short as 2 minutes and others being as long as 17 minutes. To begin most of these videos, we get an understanding of who the people are that we are going to be amused by. While learning about the people, we also get to learn about their assumptions for what they are about to consume. To follow, we get to sit back, relax and enjoy the fun of watching people’s expectations change while they eat away at their food. I am very interested in videos of people tasting food from other countries. Here in America, people eat for example Chinese food expecting that to be how it tastes everywhere. Little do they know, food from other countries have totally different tastes back where they came from. For most meals, the “contestants” get to experience an appetizer, entrée and a dessert. One of the most enjoyable parts of these videos is the ending part after the eating is done. We get to experience a recap with a reflective interview that we can all enjoy.

These types of videos have many different purposes but the most important is for entertainment. All hundreds of food tasting videos I have watched, I thoroughly get to enjoy due to the relaxed, fun and humorous tones. Viewers get to experience critique but also enjoyment by the people involved in the videos.

Videos I will be using:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqYGGqTC_Us The Jewish Food Taste Test by BuzzFeedYellow. Being Jewish, I find this video to be very entertaining as people get to experience what I have eaten over time in my life.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo59LlkTDe4 Chinese People Try Panda Express For The First Time by BuzzFeedVideo. This is a video showing people from China getting the opportunity to experience the Chinese food that we here in America get to enjoy.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zl3ZVlt_Io Indian Food Taste Test by Elly Awesome. This page has many different tasting videos with much amusement throughout.

“Easy Teriyaki Chicken – How To Make The Easiest Way”. YouTube. N.p., 2013. Web. 22 Mar. 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RXjIz9hCJI

For my mentor piece, I decided to choose a teriyaki chicken instructional video made from “Chowhound”. I like the idea of using videos for recipes because I know many audience members enjoy watching more than reading.

Whenever somebody is interested in how to make something, Chowhound is most likely going to have your answer. Chowhound not only describes how to make food but also lets us in on videos providing us with information on cities foods, tools and even reviews! One of my favorite things about these videos is how short they are yet, they give us all the information we could want/need. The videos are easy to follow and definitely manageable to watch and make at the same time. Chowhound supplies us with easy instructions that first time makers can follow without hesitation. While watching the video, it is interesting to see how professional it seems. A YouTube channel with just a few minute long videos really grabs your attention and looks like an expert. The actress in these videos make watching very nice and relaxing as she is confident and has a big smile on her face the whole time. My specific video I picked has a great amount of specific detail that the audience would enjoy. I especially appreciate how the speaker knows what problems may occur and she describes what to do in those situations. The video is very simple, well done and contains a great amount of important detail to make the process easy.

This page has hundreds of thousands of subscriptions and millions of views. The channel gets paid by views and due to the high amount of viewers, Chowhound is able to keep producing great videos for rookie and professional cooks. In my opinion, video recipes are fantastic and more enjoyable to do. Being able to watch in amazement instead of staring at words on lines seems more interesting to me and I enjoy the vast majority of food videos I watch. Chowhound provides us as the audience with simple step by step processes to make the delicious food that we have always wanted to make!

When I think of food, I immediately conclude to Asian food. In my lifetime, it has always been this way and I have always been curious to know the background history of my favorite dishes like Teriyaki Chicken, Lo Mein, Sesame Chicken & Mongolian Beef. In my research, I have been using http://www.asian-nation.org/asian-food.shtml to really help me understand many different aspects including how to make the food, the health facts about it and the popularity of the food. With the topic of Asian food, I can really talk about a broad variety of things. Asian food has many different kinds of foods whether it be appetizers, entrees, desserts or even drinks. I really enjoy researching information about the facts about Asian food including things like knowing that Asian food has the biggest variety of flavors out of all the others! http://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/chinese-food/chinese-food-facts.htm  is a website that I can go on and learn a lot of interesting facts that are fun to know. My research has been going smoothly so far but I need to expand further than the internet. It would be cool to have knowledge from magazines, newspapers and especially from people who have lived in an Asian food environment!

The research I have been working on over the past few weeks has been rough but is now coming along nicely. At first, my biggest challenge was coming up with a topic. I decided to go with a topic that I enjoy so that I will not be bored while researching. Learning about the history of my favorite kind of food is going to be very interesting to me and something that I believe I can benefit from in life. Asian food and I have always had a great connection and we meet around 5 times a week. http://www.asian-recipe.com/cuisine-evolution.html is a site that shows me the history of Asian food along with information on more delicious recipes I can learn. I feel like the history of Asian food is a broad topic so getting more deep into it and maybe finding better and more detailed topics would be nice. If I’m going to be honest, my research skills overall are pretty pathetic and bad. My go to move is google but beyond that I struggle when it comes to researching and I look forward to learning more skills as the semester unfolds. To conclude, I like where I am at now but more work is going to be needed for me to feel comfortable and confident in my work.

Ryan’s Delicious Dessert

Are you a chocolate fan? Are you tired of eating the same old dessert that you have been eating your whole life? Do you want to try something new? If so, wow, do I have a perfect recipe for you! Ryan’s Delicious Dessert is full of chocolate surprises. Ice cream, toppings, cake balls, Oreos, to even more chocolate, Ryan has created a masterpiece that is waiting for you to try! While the dish may taste incredible, the design is also made to draw your attention and make your mouth water. I have been eating the same desserts ever since I can remember and have witnessed the same things on every menu so I decided it is time to take a stand and make a new dessert. Try it out!

Ingredients:

• 3 scoops of chocolate ice cream in the middle of your plate.

To create the delicious chocolate/Oreo cake balls:

• 32 Oreo Cookies (300g, 10.5oz)
• 300g cream cheese 10.5oz
• 400g chocolate 14oz (Hershey’s preferred)

These balls will surround the ice cream that is in the middle of the plate.

On top of the ice cream, you will sprinkle on

• 25 chocolate chips
• A small amount of chocolate sprinkles (However much you prefer)

In order to make this dessert to the best of its abilities, you must start with the cake balls as they can take a good amount of time to make.

Preparation for cake balls:

• Break the 25 Oreos with your hands strongly
• Place the crushed up Oreos into a blender
• Close the blender and grind up those cookies for 30 seconds (or until the cookies are soft)
• Place them in a large bowl and add all of the 300g of cream cheese in the bowl
• Mix both ingredients until you get a homogeneous dough
• Take a tablespoon of dough with your hands and make it into a small ball shape
• Put all balls on a tray with parchment paper
• When all balls are made, put the tray in the freezer for about an hour
• After the hour, place a small pot over another large one with hot water
• In the small pot, put your 400g of chocolate in
• Let it all melt
• Once melted, place a ball in the chocolate and coat it well
• Do it quickly so that the ball does not thaw in the chocolate
• After coating the ball, place the ball back onto the parchment paper
• When done coating all, place them in the fridge for a minimum of three hours
• Take out and enjoy!

Supplies:

• Blender
• Parchment Paper
• Small pot
• Large pot
• Refrigerator

All recipes should be made with the thought of who the audience is going to be. Important details on all of the ingredients and supplies to create the dish is very necessary and for me, pictures are also a huge help. I believe that going into detail on each ingredient is important for the audience so that they can get a clear understanding for what they are about to make. While all recipes are different, the purpose of them are always the same. The goal is to create a perfect and clear guide to readers on how to create their food. Step by step instructions are believed to be the best way to get the audience hooked. Often times when people are making food by looking at others recipes, they are rookies when it comes to cooking. Having a step by step guide makes it way easier for those new cooks and they enjoy their time making their food more. Authors who describe what they are making help readers by making them eager to get the job done. If I were an author, I would describe each ingredient with as much information as possible so that the audience is more intrigued.

My favorite dish is a tasty teriyaki chicken bowl. I picked “http://natashaskitchen.com/2015/12/11/easy-teriyaki-chicken/” to show a great technique as a cook for audience members. In the video, it shows a clear step by step guide on how to make teriyaki chicken. I think it is essential for readers to have a clear understanding of how to do everything in order so making a video to provide that is a great idea.

While I think most recipes are of good structure, there are definitely some out in the world that are not easy to follow. For instance, when a recipe is out of order it is expected for the audience to know how to make the dish when most of the time, the audience members trying to make the dish do not even make food following recipes very often. Many times there are hand-written books for recipes that are given to people who want to cook. A key issue with this sometimes is that handwriting may be bad and hard to read. Luckily, I believe that there are more good recipe books, videos and ways to share recipes out there than there are bad. I enjoy authors sharing their recipes very much as I think it is very interesting and fun to make new things. I look forward to making more in the near future thanks to this class!