I’ve mentioned how busy we get here around football season already.  So busy I haven’t posted here.  Fortunately, the team’s playing away for the next few weeks and we’re getting around to catching our breath.  Which is really a way of saying we are about to do everything we haven’t been doing for three weeks.  Most notably, this means cleaning, organizing, paperwork, fitting in all those university events that we simply could not handle during a football weekend, and running taste tests and tours.  We all probably got in another hour or two of sleep a day than during the push weeks. Perhaps the pace is a bit more relaxed, but the job stays interesting. 

     This week, we’ve had several new products come in for testing.  Thursday, a new meat vendor came in with 17 different products to serve at our Production Managers’ meeting, and I cooked them all up.  Unfortunately for us, the vendor was aimed at the cafeteria side of our business, and while decent, wasn’t tremendous.  The most anticipated product for us, an all-natural hamburger, ended up dry and fairly tasteless, and had no ability to hold its quality over any length of time.  We also tasted several new powdered mousse mixes, all failing to have a decent texture.  Our favorite of them all –or rather, I should say most interesting– was the miracle creme brulee / flan powder.  Mix the powder with milk and it’s a creme brulee.  Mix it with water, and it’s a flan!  That was ringing alarm bells right there.  We  opted for the creme brulee recipe, as that perfect level of just-set creaminess is very tough to reach.   Following the recipe perfectly, the creme looked OK, and smelled much like a vanilla brulee.  Then we set it in a pan to cool, and I began walking it over to the walk-in fridge to chill and set up.  I watched with horror when, still steaming hot and no more than five steps from the stove, the stuff (it was no longer a creme brulee) began to actually pull away from the pan’s edges — it was already set harder than it should have.  Advance one hour in time, and I produced the resulting thing to the chef…  the texture was somewhere between an omelet and mozzarella cheese, with a wonderful ability to compress and spring back.  Yes, we created a sugary scrambled egg-flavored exercise mat.

    Not all of our explorations were terrible..  Bobolink Farms, a dairy farm just outside of New York City, provided us some grass-fed cows milk cheeses that were noteworthy.  While they all had a cheddar-based flavor profile, their Drumm had an unusually nice creaminess to the texture, and the frolic was a unique blend of different flavors.  Nothing that will replace our regular stable of high-end cheeses, but certainly something to consider when doing some of our smaller menus that focus on local artisanal products.

     Now, we might be relatively quiet for a few weeks, but the units dealing with the student are, of course, still pounding out 8,000 meals a day.  Every once in awhile, we get a hire or two that don’t quite make it up to expectations and they either quit or get nudged out the door.  This summer, we had an exception — we hired a man who had never worked in a kitchen before, and threw him into one of our smallest units.  Needless to say, this caused some problems quite rapidly;  we had an employee who was a very kind person, had a never give up attitude, and just never could get anything done in the kitchen from lack of experience.  Our chef decided to take him under our wing for our quiet week and go through a crash course or two in production in volume, recipe reading, cutting and chopping, and all the other things a good cook has down by heart.  Remedial cooking classes.  While certainly not the fastest learner, our student has probably learned more in the week we’ve worked with him than the six weeks since school opened and we might just make an employee out of him yet.

    But it’s time to sleep.  As I said… we’re glad football is over, but tomorrow things go up a notch again — we’ve got the men’s ice hockey home opener, and it’s sure to be a grand event.  Two team ranked within the top 4 nationally are going to duke it out, and most of the kitchen’s planning to enjoy the game.  We’re all hockey fanatics rooting for different NHL teams, but we all cheer on our own team when the puck drops.

   Me?  I’ll be joining them just as soon as the luxury boxes are served, the buffet lines closed, and the kitchen buttoned up for another night. 

 An example of our highest end catering, this party was held for 8 guests this evening.  Our hostess is quite a foodie herself and spends much time discussing food and cooking with us.  On this occasion, she even had prepared braised beef cheeks for us.   The cheeks were quite delicious, being a texture similar to pot roast, but far more tender and a little richer taste.  After eatng, we got down to business

Menu

Reception

Blini with crème fraiche and Ossetra caviar

Truffled Grilled Cheese

Ricotta Salata with fig compote on bread toasts

First Course
Yellowfin tuna carpaccio with late summer salad of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, rainbow radish, flat leaf parsley, picholine olives, red onion, and bell peppers

Second Course
Mesquite grilled local line caught bluefish, serve over last of the season sweet corn and potato hash, finished with heirloom tomato vinaigrette

Third Course
Slow roasted filet of beef tenderloin topped with seared Hudson Valley foie gras served over black truffle gnocchi, roastedpotatoes and butternut squash

Dessert Course
Selection of Gorgonzola Piccante, Pierre Robert on crusty baguette, and Bouc Emmissaire accompanied by fresh Turkish figs and champagne grapes
Assorted Imported chocolate truffles and candies

Just as a heads up, I thought I’d drop a list of the items I have on the back burner for this blog.

   While I’ll continue to describe the crazy antics of daily work in the kitchen, many of my posts will be on different topics that will likely be of more interest for readers.

    First and foremost will be an introduction to some of the more unusual foods that come through our kitchen…  noteworthy discoveries on our plates recently:  bakwaa, wild boar prosciutto, popcorn sprouts, miracle berries, lychee fruits, and Army issued MREs.  I know, most of us remember college food tasting like MREs, but there have been quite a few changes in the last decade…

   Next, tips and tricks in the kitchen, everything from pairing wines and cheeses to menu design and cutting cakes or safe chopping methods and equipment recommendations.

   I’ll also post a few complete menus when I have the chance (generally with pictures of each course) that we’ve done recently.

   There might just be observations on the current trend of celebrity chefs and reality kitchen shows, as well as my own life’s history (and how it took this odd turn into the food mining business) as wel as more general rants on the business.

   Finally, I might just crack open the Kitchen Bible I maintain and rewrite a few of the recipes for use in household kitchens. 

    If there’s anythign in here that particularly piques your interest, let me know and I’ll make sure to get it out first.

 amph.

Thursdays seem to be the big day for after-class get togethers here.  I suppose folks realize Fridays just don’t draw students in when there’s plenty of bars just down the street.  From the moment I walked in until the sun was down, there was nothing but barbecues in my life.  Five different BBQs went out in three hours, feeding 1250 people varied menus of hot dogs, grilled chicken, burgers, sausages, and all the fixin’s.  That might not sound like a terrible amount, but it stressed the limits of our equipment and support services to get them all out on time and to the right place.  Considering we’ve got the big game on Saturday, I was also in charge of putting them all out alone, with cooks from other units coming in to handle the final on-site cooking.  This in theory would allow the other cooks from catering to prep up for the game (I’m planning on devoting a full week to a blow-by-blow of game day prep for our next game if you are interested in seeing the week-long proccess it takes to feed a stadium of folks for four hours), but they all had other events as well, so it’s another early morning and late night tommorrow.

Who:  1650 people total in the afternoon, which is one-fifth of the schools student body.  Not too bad for a day’s work. 
What: Other than the endless burgers and dogs, we also pumped out such interesting items as tuna carpacchio and mousakka for  events
Tommorrow’s menu:  Lobster bake, hor’douvres parties, and desserts at the museum opening.  And two days of football prep.

Late summer in New England is truly wonderful.  The Sox are playing great (great enough to even let the Yanks sweep them and still lead), Cape Cod is always a wonderful escape from the city — once you get by the traffic, and beautiful harvests are coming in from all the local farms.  The few cool evenings only remind one that the county fairs are just getting ready to start and the horizon will soon be covered in vivid foliage that almost makes one welcome the not-so-slow slide into bleak winter.

    Truly, it is a most wonderful time of the year.

   Unless you work in Boston .  For a college.  As a catering cook.  Like me.

  Then Labor Day means what it really sounds like it should mean.  Work, and lots of it.

  Three thoughts always hover around Labor Day Weekend when you live in Boston…

BBQ!  Football!  School!  For most, the first two are welcome celebrations of the passing of the season, and the last a bit of dread to every Bostonian as we prepare for the invasion…  For me, it brings a mixture of anticipation of exciting times and foreboding of much too exciting times.

   You see,  I work as a catering cook at a top-tier university in Boston, and Labor Day means classes begin, and we change from a sleepy campus with about 2000 daily guests to our own town of 17,000 students, staff, faculty and visitors, all looking to be fed and entertained as part of the college environment.  Preferrably several times a day.  Normally, that is handled admirably by a staff of 500 dining services employees (from chefs and bean counters to students seeking a little extra cash).  But even our wonderful cafeteria food doesn’t fit the desires of all our customers, and we generally have a few dozen functions each day that demand a special bit of attention.  And then there’s football, when we invite 45,000 of our closest friends to come enjoy a nice game and consume tons (literally) of our catered food…

   “In 2006 a crack cooking unit was sent to Walsh Hall for a crime they didn’t commit. These chefs promptly escaped from a maximum security walk-in to the campus underground. Today, still wanted by the administration, they survive as caterers of last resort.  If you have a function, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire: THE A-TEAM”

   We might not be the  A-TEAM, but the adventure and wild rides are certainly here.

   Herein is told the adventures of ten caterers, a dozen support staff, one old kitchen with character, a few trucks and vans, a wall full of event sheets, and highest expectations on unmoveable deadlines.  See what makes our team tick, learn a few tricks of the trade, and maybe leave with a greater appreciation of the life of a caterer. 

    The hours are long, the stress constant, and the kitchen hot and humid.  Or, as I am far too fond of saying in the kitchen,

“Easy Money!”

      I’m not sure I’ve quite got the  hang of the English language yet…

amphibolous