I need help with my cooking class?!

Chicken Chow Mien

1 pound boneless chicken cut into bite size pieces
1 can Chinese veggies
1 can chicken broth or stock
1 small can sliced mushrooms
1 small onion, minced
2 tablespoons corn starch or flour
? cup water
2-3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 bag chow Mien noodles
2 tablespoons oil
Sale & pepper

Salt & pepper chicken
Add oil and sauté onion until clear not brown on medium
Add chicken and cook until tender, don’t over cook will be tough
Drain veggies and mushrooms and add to chicken and stir to heat through
Add broth and heat on low
Stir flour/cornstarch into water and add to pan to thicken sauce
Continue to cook until all thickened. If not enough sauce add a
little more broth or water then stir in soy sauce and serve over white rice
or chow Mien noodles


Pan Potatoes
375 degrees

3 large potatoes sliced
1 large onion sliced
1 large bell pepper
Olive oil
Minced garlic or garlic powder
Salt & pepper
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)

Cover a large cookie sheet with foil. Place potatoes on cookie sheet. Combine with peppers and onions, garlic and crushed red pepper flakes. Coat the potatoes, peppers and onions with extra-virgin olive oil just enough to coat vegetables in a thin layer, 2 to 3 tablespoons. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Place potatoes in the oven and roast 20 to 22 minutes, until potatoes are just tender and peppers and onions are crisp at edges. Toss mixture with tongs, turning the potatoes after 15 minutes. When the potatoes are cooked, transfer them to a serving dish and peel the foil off the cookie sheet and discard for super-quick clean up!

I hope you can grill, most meat and fish taste great when simply grilled.
Preheat a grill and place the meat ontop of it, turn after a few minutes depending on its thickness. Dress with flavoured sauces, mushrooms, blue cheese, etc.
As for fish, you must clean it before you grill it (your fishmonger can do it for you); then you stuff a bit of rosemary and garlic inside the fish belly, for extra flavouring. Now your fish is ready for the grill.
Once cooked, season it with salt, parsley, oil or mayonnaise.

Another quick and easy way of cooking food is using a pan. You stir fry some finely chopped onion with some oil and when the onion is soft just throw in whatever it is you want to cook: shrimps, cod, chopped veal or beef. Add half a glass of wine (white for the fish and veal, red for the beef) for extra flavour, make sure all the alcohol evaporates while the food keeps on cooking, then just throw in whatever it is you want to add: potatoes, peas, etc. If it's a stew, add some tomato sauce and let it stew away for about one hour stirring occasionally. Just remember to check there's enough tomato and water for your stew to cook properly.
If you wish to add a personal touch to your dish, I recommend you spice it up with something:
if there's some tomato sauce: chilli powder
if it's shrimps: saffron
etc.

Italian native with an attitude for good food :-)

You're not pushing it, but it doesn't sound like a very organized class. Usually they tell you what you need, because the dishes you make are chosen to teach specific skills. (chopping, boning,
grilling, etc.) Dishes are also organized by ingredient and difficulty of preparation. I think you need to talk to the teacher, and I hope you're not paying too much. It sounds like the inmates are running the asylum.

I agree that they should be suggesting things to you, and in an order that makes sense when "learning to cook." (Maybe they're just asking class members what kinds of things they'd like to learn to cook or any particular dishes they'd like to learn to incorporate them or to lean the class in a certain direction?)

I'm also not sure if they (or you) are asking for a list of "foods" or a list of "dishes":
...so are you asking for foods, like chicken, spinach, squash, shrimp, etc?
...or are you asking for dishes, like chicken parmesan, spinach quiche, squash fitters, shrimp creole?
...or are you asking for "techniques," like baked chicken, poached chicken, fried chicken, etc.?

Since I don't know what you want exactly, check out some of these recipes for "easy recipes for beginning cooks" which should give you some suggestions to pick from:
http://www.google.com/images?q=recipes+e…
http://www.google.com/search?q=recipes+e…

Just a couple of suggestions off the top of my head would be "quick breads" and baked chicken (though there are a lot of ways to do that one if not doing a whole chicken at one time).
http://www.google.com/images?q=quick+bre…
http://www.google.com/images?q=recipes+b…

The perfect scrambled eggs.