Catering
Friday, February 2
Today, I went in with Yuki to prepare for a catering event on Saturday. It was fairly light day and nice to be back in the kitchen again. We were preparing appetizers for a 1000-person event. The event is a gourmet food and wine show with the region's top chefs, benefiting the children's Make a Wish Foundation. Tickets are $150 per person and it looks like it will be a great experience and lot of fun. I am presenting with Eric and a few other interns. http://www.makewish.org/site/pp.asp?
We worked with Chef Eric to prep a number of items, which we will finish tomorrow before the event. I had the chance to work on a vegan wonton recipe that he was trying out and wanted to work closely together on to get it right. He said that he's found it imposible to buy vegan won ton wraps so he's decided that he wanted to still use them for an appetizer and would try making his own. I did the mise-en-place for a recipe he recited to me, and then used the Hogart, which is one of those commercial mixers that are large (about three feet high) and has a large intimidating hook that "can break you arm right off if you put it in there" the pastry said to me in passing when I was asking her how to set it up. Nice. Eric worked with me to get the perfect consistency and moisture content (slightly moist to the touch) for the black and white sesame seed filled dough. It's very important he said to use the right temperature for the water and not to work the dough too much as not to develop the gluten. Then, after letting the dough rest covered, he brought out the pasta making device that we used to put through medium chunks of dough and make then into thin sheets. We tested a few won tons in the deep fryer upstairs, which he kept in his office afterwards for a few hours, to see how they would develop and taste. I told them he would have to keep them under lock and key as they looked delicious and would be eaten. He said they would be ok but later that afternoon he called out to me and was laughing as he said that I was right and someone had eaten some of them. There was still one precious test sample left and he protected that one. After we rolled out the dough into thin slabs, I let them rest outside (the fridge area) to dry and then they would be in destined for the fridge overnight. Eric said that he wanted to minimize the amount of moisture in them thus limiting in the time in fridge and using a lot flour to cover them. I left work before they went into the walk-in fridge, so we'll see the result tomorrow when we cut out 3" boxes and fry them lightly. Of course, this is only the beginning of the foundation for an Eric creation. He created an incredible fragrant and complex chili oil, using three kinds of fresh peppers, ginger, onions, and a number of fresh and dried herbs and other ingredients. This will sit overnight in the fridge, strained, and then will be used in the appetizer. He also plans to used fresh grapefruit sections and a number of other items. Then this will be topped with a vegetarian black caviar that he found recently and let us try. It is absolutely amazing and delicious, and really looks like and tastes like caviar. I was wondering how it was made and he was guessing that it was some sort of kuzu/arrowroot mixture that it used to make the individual tiny balls. I'll have to wait to report back on this creation when I help prepare and finish them for the event tomorrow. This is the thing with Chef Eric's dishes. They are so complex and interesting and you never know what is going to be the final creation in terms of taste, texture and presentation. A lot of work and care goes into each element and he's a mastermind of how he has all this in this head how he is going to orchestrate putting all the different elements together, like a conductor of an orchestra and it's many individual instruments. And, we are not preparing this time for just a number of people but 1,000. This is one of the things I find fascinating about his work, how he comes up with these creations, how he constantly comes up with innovative ideas and takes risks, and continues to be one of the leaders in the industry vs. a follower. For example, he couldn't find the right salt for his restaurant so he decided to combine a number of ingredients to make his own and a number of restaurants were impressed by this and are now following this like Candle 79. Salt, good sea salt and other types of natural salts that are not processed such as table salt, is one of the key elements in cooking as you may know.
In the afternoon, Eric took a woman around the kitchen for a tour and we assumed it was a new intern as there are several working with him. When we started to speak to her, Eileen, we found out that she is from Canada, from Toronto but born in Ottawa, and now lives and works in California. She took a cooking course with Eric about a week ago or so (the Superbowl cooking class) and was so impressed with him that she asked if she go into the kitchen for a day with him to work with him and see how the kitchen operates. She has no culinary experience except for cooking in her own kitchen. But, Eric agreed to take her on and there she was right beside him, with Eric directing her and teaching her one item at a time, including how to peel beets that have been cooked first (with a wet cloth), how to cut them, etc. Depending on how things go she may come in again. She works full-time in an office and just wanted to try it out. I didn't realize this, but if you get the right chef and restaurant you can always ask them if you can come into their kitchens for a day or period of time to work with them, for free of course. However, this would definitely depend on the willingness and patience of the chef to work with people who are new to the kitchen. Even people with some culinary experience have to often "trail" the chef in the kitchen for a day before their internships to see if the chef likes them and there is a good connection and fit with him/her. I also ran into a woman at Pure Food and Wine who is a raw foodist that has very limited experience in the kitchen but asked Chef Neal if she could come in once a week to see how the kitchen operates and help out, and he agreed. She had done a number of stints in different raw food restaurants in the US, in particular with yoga and related centres, and she said this is common in the raw food community in particular to allow people to come into their kitchens to learn and help. So there you go. I had no idea you could do this, but I'm not sure I personally would go through this route with limited skills. I think you would have to have enough confidence not to be shattered if things do not go well or are not entirely as you expected they would be. The chef might invite you in and be great, but the others in the kitchen are extremely busy and on tight deadlines in cramped quarters, and may feel that they are not paid enough or have the time to train and monitor someone in addition to all that they have to do. Even with my limited culinary skills, I thought I would be a help to the restaurants I interned out such as at Candle 79, but I quickly realized that I was more of a hindrance to the line staff. The manager could agree to interns and bring them in but often the task of monitoring and training them is often transferred to the line staff, who are often not told they have to do this in advance or even asked, and don't see the value of bringing interns aboard.
After we prepped all that we could for the day, we went upstairs around 5 pm for the daily line-up and tasting, where Chef Eric said we were welcome to try everything after the sous-chef had his tasting first. This is always an interesting process to see everything plated and one or both chefs tasting everything and making their comments to the chef who has prepared something... a bit more salt, less oil, more sauce, smaller portion, tighter presentation, etc. We had the opportunity to eat at the bar afterwards and I ate the Romaine salad and the Polenta Nera dish with butternut squash, sweet pepper and fennel ragu, seared brussel sprouts, spicy seitan sausage, spaghetti squash and herb salad, and pine nut toasted breadcrumbs. Yuki ate the daily soup (black bean) and the Habanero-Orange Jerked Tempeh dish. All lovely.
This week they are starting a Month of Love menu and there is a special insert menu with four courses of exotic, spicy, firey and colourful food. They are also always working on promoting a number of non-alcoholic drinks they call "libations", including a Himalayan Rawgasm with refreshing kombucha tonic with ginger-infused agave, garnished with dried goji berries, served up, or Love Potion #9 with pomegrante juice and orange lemonade, served up.
After a week of working very long and exhausting days, and coming in on my so-called day off on Friday, I was happy to have the night off. This week, I have worked about 60 hours in five days without pay and am completely exhausted but have so learned so much and am really enjoying it, so I know I'm heading in the right direction, wherever it may lead.
Today, I went in with Yuki to prepare for a catering event on Saturday. It was fairly light day and nice to be back in the kitchen again. We were preparing appetizers for a 1000-person event. The event is a gourmet food and wine show with the region's top chefs, benefiting the children's Make a Wish Foundation. Tickets are $150 per person and it looks like it will be a great experience and lot of fun. I am presenting with Eric and a few other interns. http://www.makewish.org/site/pp.asp?
We worked with Chef Eric to prep a number of items, which we will finish tomorrow before the event. I had the chance to work on a vegan wonton recipe that he was trying out and wanted to work closely together on to get it right. He said that he's found it imposible to buy vegan won ton wraps so he's decided that he wanted to still use them for an appetizer and would try making his own. I did the mise-en-place for a recipe he recited to me, and then used the Hogart, which is one of those commercial mixers that are large (about three feet high) and has a large intimidating hook that "can break you arm right off if you put it in there" the pastry said to me in passing when I was asking her how to set it up. Nice. Eric worked with me to get the perfect consistency and moisture content (slightly moist to the touch) for the black and white sesame seed filled dough. It's very important he said to use the right temperature for the water and not to work the dough too much as not to develop the gluten. Then, after letting the dough rest covered, he brought out the pasta making device that we used to put through medium chunks of dough and make then into thin sheets. We tested a few won tons in the deep fryer upstairs, which he kept in his office afterwards for a few hours, to see how they would develop and taste. I told them he would have to keep them under lock and key as they looked delicious and would be eaten. He said they would be ok but later that afternoon he called out to me and was laughing as he said that I was right and someone had eaten some of them. There was still one precious test sample left and he protected that one. After we rolled out the dough into thin slabs, I let them rest outside (the fridge area) to dry and then they would be in destined for the fridge overnight. Eric said that he wanted to minimize the amount of moisture in them thus limiting in the time in fridge and using a lot flour to cover them. I left work before they went into the walk-in fridge, so we'll see the result tomorrow when we cut out 3" boxes and fry them lightly. Of course, this is only the beginning of the foundation for an Eric creation. He created an incredible fragrant and complex chili oil, using three kinds of fresh peppers, ginger, onions, and a number of fresh and dried herbs and other ingredients. This will sit overnight in the fridge, strained, and then will be used in the appetizer. He also plans to used fresh grapefruit sections and a number of other items. Then this will be topped with a vegetarian black caviar that he found recently and let us try. It is absolutely amazing and delicious, and really looks like and tastes like caviar. I was wondering how it was made and he was guessing that it was some sort of kuzu/arrowroot mixture that it used to make the individual tiny balls. I'll have to wait to report back on this creation when I help prepare and finish them for the event tomorrow. This is the thing with Chef Eric's dishes. They are so complex and interesting and you never know what is going to be the final creation in terms of taste, texture and presentation. A lot of work and care goes into each element and he's a mastermind of how he has all this in this head how he is going to orchestrate putting all the different elements together, like a conductor of an orchestra and it's many individual instruments. And, we are not preparing this time for just a number of people but 1,000. This is one of the things I find fascinating about his work, how he comes up with these creations, how he constantly comes up with innovative ideas and takes risks, and continues to be one of the leaders in the industry vs. a follower. For example, he couldn't find the right salt for his restaurant so he decided to combine a number of ingredients to make his own and a number of restaurants were impressed by this and are now following this like Candle 79. Salt, good sea salt and other types of natural salts that are not processed such as table salt, is one of the key elements in cooking as you may know.
In the afternoon, Eric took a woman around the kitchen for a tour and we assumed it was a new intern as there are several working with him. When we started to speak to her, Eileen, we found out that she is from Canada, from Toronto but born in Ottawa, and now lives and works in California. She took a cooking course with Eric about a week ago or so (the Superbowl cooking class) and was so impressed with him that she asked if she go into the kitchen for a day with him to work with him and see how the kitchen operates. She has no culinary experience except for cooking in her own kitchen. But, Eric agreed to take her on and there she was right beside him, with Eric directing her and teaching her one item at a time, including how to peel beets that have been cooked first (with a wet cloth), how to cut them, etc. Depending on how things go she may come in again. She works full-time in an office and just wanted to try it out. I didn't realize this, but if you get the right chef and restaurant you can always ask them if you can come into their kitchens for a day or period of time to work with them, for free of course. However, this would definitely depend on the willingness and patience of the chef to work with people who are new to the kitchen. Even people with some culinary experience have to often "trail" the chef in the kitchen for a day before their internships to see if the chef likes them and there is a good connection and fit with him/her. I also ran into a woman at Pure Food and Wine who is a raw foodist that has very limited experience in the kitchen but asked Chef Neal if she could come in once a week to see how the kitchen operates and help out, and he agreed. She had done a number of stints in different raw food restaurants in the US, in particular with yoga and related centres, and she said this is common in the raw food community in particular to allow people to come into their kitchens to learn and help. So there you go. I had no idea you could do this, but I'm not sure I personally would go through this route with limited skills. I think you would have to have enough confidence not to be shattered if things do not go well or are not entirely as you expected they would be. The chef might invite you in and be great, but the others in the kitchen are extremely busy and on tight deadlines in cramped quarters, and may feel that they are not paid enough or have the time to train and monitor someone in addition to all that they have to do. Even with my limited culinary skills, I thought I would be a help to the restaurants I interned out such as at Candle 79, but I quickly realized that I was more of a hindrance to the line staff. The manager could agree to interns and bring them in but often the task of monitoring and training them is often transferred to the line staff, who are often not told they have to do this in advance or even asked, and don't see the value of bringing interns aboard.
After we prepped all that we could for the day, we went upstairs around 5 pm for the daily line-up and tasting, where Chef Eric said we were welcome to try everything after the sous-chef had his tasting first. This is always an interesting process to see everything plated and one or both chefs tasting everything and making their comments to the chef who has prepared something... a bit more salt, less oil, more sauce, smaller portion, tighter presentation, etc. We had the opportunity to eat at the bar afterwards and I ate the Romaine salad and the Polenta Nera dish with butternut squash, sweet pepper and fennel ragu, seared brussel sprouts, spicy seitan sausage, spaghetti squash and herb salad, and pine nut toasted breadcrumbs. Yuki ate the daily soup (black bean) and the Habanero-Orange Jerked Tempeh dish. All lovely.
This week they are starting a Month of Love menu and there is a special insert menu with four courses of exotic, spicy, firey and colourful food. They are also always working on promoting a number of non-alcoholic drinks they call "libations", including a Himalayan Rawgasm with refreshing kombucha tonic with ginger-infused agave, garnished with dried goji berries, served up, or Love Potion #9 with pomegrante juice and orange lemonade, served up.
After a week of working very long and exhausting days, and coming in on my so-called day off on Friday, I was happy to have the night off. This week, I have worked about 60 hours in five days without pay and am completely exhausted but have so learned so much and am really enjoying it, so I know I'm heading in the right direction, wherever it may lead.
posted by Caroline at 9:44 AM
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