WJEC GCSE Food and Nutrition: Student Book

390 2  Summary of the research methods The research you do will depend on the brief. Some useful sources you can consider include: • Recipe books – think about finding a control recipe from a reliable source • Magazines and newspapers – food magazines, including the free ones from supermarkets, newspaper articles • Online sources – articles, videos, food bloggers • Text books – including the food science chapters • TV programmes Think about summarising your research findings concisely. Avoid any waffle. How could you do this? A list, a table, a mind map or thought shower? It is up to you – whatever works best for you. Research methods: The first thing I did was jot down the ways I could think of that you would thicken a sauce. These were my initial thoughts: Using different ingredients: wheat flour, cornflour, arrowroot, potato starch and rice starch. These ingredients will thicken by a process called gelatinisation. Using different methods: roux, all in one method, reduction and puréeing. The second thing I did was to look through my textbook and cookbooks to see if I had missed anything – I wanted to make sure there weren’t any other ways to thicken a sauce that I had missed. I then found out about beurre manié 1 . This is a mix made up of equal parts of soft butter and flour and is used to thicken soups and sauces. This is often added towards the end of the cooking process when a sauce needs thickening. So, I added this to my list of methods of making sauces. The third thing I did was research online, by googling ‘ different ways to thicken a sauce ’ to see if I had missed anything else. On the Jamie Oliver forum 2 I read one posting that said they thickened soups using bread. I then researched this some more and found that bread sauce (used on Christmas day as an accompaniment to roast turkey) and a chilled Spanish soup called gazpacho are thickened with bread 3 . Another website (http://www.wikihow.com/Thicken-Sauce 4 ) told me that you can also use food gums as thickening agents such as xanthan gum, agar and guar gum. It also suggested using potato flakes. It also showed how to use eggs as a thickening agent e.g. egg yolks in custard. Another website (http://www.cooksrecipes.com/tips/how-to-thicken-sauce.html 5 ) also suggested boiling cream to make it thicker and then adding it to a sauce to help to thicken it. It also mentioned thickeners such as blood (like in black pudding) yogurt, fresh cheese and ground almonds. I put all my ideas into a mind map, which I hand drew and photographed as it’s much quicker for me. Here it is: 1 Davies, Jill (2005) Hammond’s Cooking Explained , 4th edition. Longman: Pearson Education Limited 2 Jamie Oliver.com (2015) forum: Food & Drink http://www.jamieoliver.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=574032 3 TheTelegraph online (2015)The KitchenThinker: Bread sauce http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/8194243/The-Kitchen-Thinker-Bread-sauce.ht 4 Wikihow: (2015) How to thicken sauce http://www.wikihow.com/Thicken-Sauce 5 cooksrecipes.com (2015) FromThe Cook's Bible: How toThicken a Sauce (http://www.cooksrecipes.com/tips/how-to-thicken-sauce.html ) You can see this student has not wasted any time with long introductions; he has got straight to the point. A good range of research has been done. Food science term used. The student has referenced his sources well. This student has developed the structure and headings for themself. Writing frames / pro-formas have not been used. General NEA guidance: p395 NON-EXAMINATION ASSESSMENTS