Overview

Vegetables, fruits, eggs and farinaceous foods are nutritious, tasty, important to our eating patterns and integral to almost every dish served on a menu. Yet, they are also items often neglected in conversations when people talk about food. They simply fit into the menu and always have.

Vegetables and fruits provide a major source of fibre, vitamins, minerals, colour, flavour, and texture variation for many prepared dishes. They come in many shapes, sizes, textures and colours, and range in flavour from sickly sweet, fiery hot, boringly bland and face twistingly tart. Most varieties can be eaten raw or cooked for further variety.

Farinaceous foods such as rice, pasta, noodles and gnocchi are both important to the diet and popular menu items in most establishments. Such is their importance, the eating patterns of most regions around the world depend on at least one type of farinaceous food for their daily carbohydrate intake and as an affordable food to satisfy the appetite.

Eggs are one of the most widely used and versatile food commodities in any commercial cookery operation and indeed, in households around the world. They can be cooked using a variety of methods and may be served as a feature item in their own right. However, it is their unique culinary properties they bring to food that makes them indispensable. Some of their culinary properties include binding, emulsify, glazing, aerating and enriching.

Your ability to correctly select, cook and prepare these foods in a professional manner for a range of menu items is vital to your overall success and reputation in the kitchen.

In this unit you will learn how to:

• Prepare vegetable and fruit dishes
• Prepare farinaceous dishes
• Prepare and cook egg-based dishes
• Store vegetables, eggs and farinaceous foodstuffs.