Western Colorado Catering Chef: Kitchen Musing and the commercial Chef World

Kitchen Musings and the commercial chef world

Since the picture blogs seem to be most popular according to the e-mails
I receive. I put together this random kitchen musings blog along with my
thoughts and comments:

One of my favorite times is the early morning. I like coming in early
and seeing the place dark and clean, unmolested and ready for the task
that will be placed on it for the days work.

I think this says a lot, my leather jacket hanging on the corner. I like
seeing the dark kitchen, make the first pot of coffee, smell it as it
covers the whole room because the hoods are still not fired up. Quiet,
no heat, no yelling, no whirring, nothing, just a coffee pot brewing and
the tickets for the days work laid out on the board for review. It is
nice to snatch a little bit of sanity in this early morning world!

So I turn on the lights and check the line:

Nothing hot yet, no rags, gloves or anything needed to start bringing
the "factory" up online for the days work.

I fire the lights up over the dish machine and run it for first fill.

This is the calmest it will be during the next 12 to 16 hours. From this
point on stuff only gets behind schedule and things only go wrong. Well
not exactly the things that go correctly don't need any attention so
they are just taken in stride. It is the stuff that goes wrong putting
everyone behind schedule that needs the attention and the adrenaline
pumping and the mind focused. We do get in the weeds in catering. And it
usually means between 150 and 500 meals are going to be late. And that
is unacceptable in this business. So you work, you sweat you cook stuff
as fast as you can, pan it, cambro it, label it and get on to the next
thing that is behind or needs to be completed. It is exhausting and
exciting, exhilarating and disappointing, stressful and wonderful all at
the same time. They say when you really hit the stride in catering you
are an animal addicted to the rush and that the highs and lows you
experience can be clinically diagnoses as bi-polar. I believe it,
because I live it and I love it.

I have to brag on Chef Al Menard a little. I think he is like 11 feet tall or something. He has moved all the
pot racks up so high I need a damn ladder to get the stuff down. Anyway
he made these strawberries for New Years Eve and I thought his tower of
strawberry was really cool. I am not talking thawed these out and plated
them, we do all our own food be damned with frozen meals!

Then Chef Al left to go celebrate New Years with his wife.

I have a friend that works at the local stone shop. I have been
collecting stone cuts since Chef Florian Wehrli suggested it in August
at his C2C fund raiser.

Chef Mike did up a stone platter for the winery party.

The pear is made of the same cheese mixture we made the snowmen out of,
only they used real sticks instead of Udon noodles so they stayed
straight this time.

This is another shot of the cheese plate. You can see Chef Al's work
station on the other side he was plating up our smoked salmon for the
winery.

I was going over to the hall at the Catholic Church to serve a New Years
Dinner.

The people had a lot of fun and so did we. One of the things I love
about catering is that usually you are doing a celebration so most
people are in a great mood. I am not saying we don't run into the big
"purple barney" Chef Polcyn spoke of in his blog, but they are not the
norm. Hence we have are own party in the BOH while the FOH is keeping
people happy. However FOH personnel can get out of control and here is
the proof!

Russ was suggesting that he had found a side that was better than the
twice baked potatoes I had made, and wanted to share the secret recipe
with me. I will cut his fingers off later!!!!

The group was its usually jolly self and was trying to deal with feed a
hundred people or so and have some sort of merriment about New Years!

To close, I got up this morning and my son and I hooked up the trailer
and delivered the steers to the slaughter house and butcher shop.

They have about 20 days of aging to do without organs and then they get
prettied up in their dress whites and report to freezers in the area.
Including our own. Oh I have been out of rib steaks to long!

Have a great day and enjoy a good wine tonight! We will speak later you
can count on it.