Don't just follow
Leong Lye Chan has learnt that it is smart to look for instructions - and then change them to suit her needs.
Leong Lye Chan worked for many years as a secretary at a university. She then stayed home to take care of her son. After which, she taught preschool. Now, Ms Leong has a brand new dream. She wants to become a chef who can teach even little kids how to bake. She has just done a tough course on pastry and baking. Information literacy has helped her to make these big decisions about her career and home life. Ms Leong tells us how it is helping in her baking as well.
Q: What made you decide to go back to school for chef training in mid-life?
My love for baking goes back a long way. I remember whenever I had guests coming over to my place for a meal, I would rush to Toa Payoh Library to borrow cook books. I followed the recipes closely and could not understand what went wrong if my baking failed.
Then, I decided it was time to take my love for baking more seriously. I wanted to learn new baking skills and have more knowledge about selecting ingredients. For all this, I knew I needed to get professional training.
Q: There are so many courses available. How did you pick your course?
My friend knew that I loved to bake. One day, she approached me and handed me the name and email address of a baking institute, the Sunrice Global Chef Academy.
I googled it on the internet. After reading the details, I was satisfied and decided to register for the course. The academy's website told me that local students would get a fee subsidy from the Workforce Development Agency. So I asked myself, why not? After all, I love to bake. It would definitely benefit me.
Q: What difference has the course made when you bake now?
Nowadays, when I look at a recipe with long instructions, I am not intimidated by it. I can understand the terms and jargon used in it. I have become more confident about changing recipes when I feel like it. I can improvise on a recipe to suit those I am baking for. I am also able to troubleshoot when my baking does not turn out as expected. All this is important to me because I really enjoy new challenges. You could say that the training has given me new literacies in the areas of pastry making and baking.
Q: Why would you need information literacy for baking a cake? Can't you simply follow a recipe?
Let me answer with an example. Recently a friend asked me to bake a birthday cake for his wife. Two of his children are lactose intolerant: they can't digest lactose, a sugar found in milk and, to a lesser extent, in dairy products made from milk. I wanted these two children to be able to enjoy eating the cake I was about to bake for their mother's birthday.
I went to the supermarket to look for the cake's ingredients. My plan was to find substitutes for butter and milk. After a good 20 minutes of reading food labels, I found what I wanted - olive oil with a monounsaturated fatty acid.
I got soy milk to substitute for the milk to make my ganache (a glaze icing made from chocolate and cream).
At that point, I felt I needed to know more about monounsaturated oil. And so, I googled the term and learnt that monounsaturated fatty acids have a higher melting point than polyunsaturated fatty acids and a lower melting point than saturated fatty acids. Also, monounsaturated fatty acids are liquids at room temperature and semisolid or solid when refrigerated.
Thanks to the internet, I found out what all these big words really meant in terms of my baking needs that day. I like getting information from Wikipedia because this free site is fairly reliable. But, I rely on my chef training to know what to do with all the information I collect. And, I think for myself before making final decisions.
After reading and thinking about the ingredients, I was satisfied with what I had as my butter and milk substitutes. I knew that my friend's children would be able to eat the birthday cake I was about to bake. And, my choice of ingredients would be healthy for them.
Learning from MS LEONG
For many complicated things we do in life, instructions are very useful. Making a video? Planting a garden? Travelling to a new place? A clear, stepby- step guide really helps.
As a chef, Leong Lye Chan depends on cooking instructions called recipes (say "reh-si-pees"). We can learn from her information literacy - not just for cooking, but any time we need instructions.
Two super sites to visit:
Leong Lye Chan worked for many years as a secretary at a university. She then stayed home to take care of her son. After which, she taught preschool. Now, Ms Leong has a brand new dream. She wants to become a chef who can teach even little kids how to bake. She has just done a tough course on pastry and baking. Information literacy has helped her to make these big decisions about her career and home life. Ms Leong tells us how it is helping in her baking as well.
Q: What made you decide to go back to school for chef training in mid-life?
My love for baking goes back a long way. I remember whenever I had guests coming over to my place for a meal, I would rush to Toa Payoh Library to borrow cook books. I followed the recipes closely and could not understand what went wrong if my baking failed.
Then, I decided it was time to take my love for baking more seriously. I wanted to learn new baking skills and have more knowledge about selecting ingredients. For all this, I knew I needed to get professional training.
Q: There are so many courses available. How did you pick your course?
My friend knew that I loved to bake. One day, she approached me and handed me the name and email address of a baking institute, the Sunrice Global Chef Academy.
I googled it on the internet. After reading the details, I was satisfied and decided to register for the course. The academy's website told me that local students would get a fee subsidy from the Workforce Development Agency. So I asked myself, why not? After all, I love to bake. It would definitely benefit me.
Q: What difference has the course made when you bake now?
Nowadays, when I look at a recipe with long instructions, I am not intimidated by it. I can understand the terms and jargon used in it. I have become more confident about changing recipes when I feel like it. I can improvise on a recipe to suit those I am baking for. I am also able to troubleshoot when my baking does not turn out as expected. All this is important to me because I really enjoy new challenges. You could say that the training has given me new literacies in the areas of pastry making and baking.
Q: Why would you need information literacy for baking a cake? Can't you simply follow a recipe?
Let me answer with an example. Recently a friend asked me to bake a birthday cake for his wife. Two of his children are lactose intolerant: they can't digest lactose, a sugar found in milk and, to a lesser extent, in dairy products made from milk. I wanted these two children to be able to enjoy eating the cake I was about to bake for their mother's birthday.
I went to the supermarket to look for the cake's ingredients. My plan was to find substitutes for butter and milk. After a good 20 minutes of reading food labels, I found what I wanted - olive oil with a monounsaturated fatty acid.
I got soy milk to substitute for the milk to make my ganache (a glaze icing made from chocolate and cream).
At that point, I felt I needed to know more about monounsaturated oil. And so, I googled the term and learnt that monounsaturated fatty acids have a higher melting point than polyunsaturated fatty acids and a lower melting point than saturated fatty acids. Also, monounsaturated fatty acids are liquids at room temperature and semisolid or solid when refrigerated.
Thanks to the internet, I found out what all these big words really meant in terms of my baking needs that day. I like getting information from Wikipedia because this free site is fairly reliable. But, I rely on my chef training to know what to do with all the information I collect. And, I think for myself before making final decisions.
After reading and thinking about the ingredients, I was satisfied with what I had as my butter and milk substitutes. I knew that my friend's children would be able to eat the birthday cake I was about to bake. And, my choice of ingredients would be healthy for them.
Learning from MS LEONG
For many complicated things we do in life, instructions are very useful. Making a video? Planting a garden? Travelling to a new place? A clear, stepby- step guide really helps.
As a chef, Leong Lye Chan depends on cooking instructions called recipes (say "reh-si-pees"). We can learn from her information literacy - not just for cooking, but any time we need instructions.
- Instructions for many tasks can be found in books and online.
- Ms Leong knows that recipes are not rules that can't be broken. She invents steps to get what she wants. You can do the same with many types of instructions.
- If she adds something new to the instructions, like a different ingredient, she does extra research about it. She wants to understand how the new step will change the result.
- Ms Leong "troubleshoots": if she does not get the right result after following the instructions, she goes through the different steps in her head to try to spot what went wrong.
Two super sites to visit:
- http://infolit.nl.sg/index.php/students/ for fun facts on information literacy;
- http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/index.aspx for your projects and assignments.