Adventures in Catering

A few months ago, long before culinary school final exams were a worry to be fretted, the Engineer's mom asked me to cater a small party she would be throwing in honor of a friend's 50th birthday. This party was going to be in July (ie, last weekend), but she knows me very well and wanted to give me plenty of advanced notice. She's a swell lady.

Of course, I accepted and immediately started making lists, mining my trove of Successful Recipes for ideas, doubting my culinary prowess, trying (unsuccessfully) to convince Mama Engineer that I wasn't nearly skilled enough to cater her party, and generally getting excited about the whole thing.

It turned out to be quite a lot of fun and rewarding in that "take a step back, fold your arms over your apron, and sigh deeply while people enjoy food you cooked" kind of way. Also to my complete and utter surprise, it was not at all stressful! Shocker!

It was a mid-afternoon party of about 40 people (although about half that number actually turned out). We were planning four main dishes--two salads, a cold soup, and a hot dish--with other little snacks scattered around the room. Here was our final line-up:

• Arugula Vichyssoise--from Epicurious
• Beet and Feta Salad in Endive Cups--from a recipe I did for the Kitchn
• Gorgonzola and Walnut Tortellini Salad
• BBQ Pulled Pork--from a recipe I found over at Andrea's Recipes
• Brioche Buns (to go with the pulled pork)--from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day

Pretty much everything except the pork and the rolls could be made in advance. I intended to make the pork the day before but there was a bit of a snafu with the pork--I hadn't realized it was still on the bone and once I'd deboned everything, I no longer had enough meat. Sigh. That ended up going in the slow cooker around midnight the night before and cooking through the night. You can assess my general state of triumphant exhaustion by the shaky picture below.On the plus side, the Engineer and I awoke Saturday morning to the sweet smell of barbecue. Let me assure you that barbecue smells just as mouth-watering at 8am as it does any other time of the day. I had to slap the Engineer's hands a few times to get him to back off and make some bacon instead.

These brioche buns were my favorite thing to make. My house smelled like a bakery. They should make candles that smell like that. Or else I might have to make these buns every day.The recipe is from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which if you haven't discovered it yet, is the best book ever for bakers on the go. I made their master recipe here on the blog a few months ago, and have since reviewed the book at the Kitchn. It's full of excellent recipes that are really just...well, good! Don't get me wrong--I love my sourdoughs with the preferments and the kneading and all that lovely stuff. It just that...sometimes...you need a quick loaf to get you through the week or to impress some new friends or something like that.

Anyways. These brioche buns are very good. The texture isn't quite as fine as brioche that I've made the long way, but I'm not telling. For sandwiches like pulled pork, they were perfect.

The salads were both a hit. The walnut-gorgonzola salad is just a solid mix of flavors. The gorgonzola is actually in the tortellini--purchased from Trader Joe's and consumed shamelessly by this particular chef. I threw in toasted walnuts for some extra walnut flavor (the gorgonzola kinda overpowers it in the tortellini, which is honestly fine by me), along with apples, argula, and caramelized onions. The dressing is a simple balsamic.
I loved the little endive scoops with the beet salad. They were so much fun to eat! Also, I'm pretty sure I've made that beet salad in one form or another every week this summer. It's that good. Go forth and make it.The only recipe I wasn't thrilled with was the argula vichyssoise. It tasted a bit flat and bland to me. I made it a few times and fussed with the recipe (especially by adding lemon), but never got it quite right. (Oh, my review of the recipe is over at the Kitchn, though reading it again now, I think I was a bit generous.) I came across another cold soup recipe the other day that used yogurt, and another one today that used buttermilk. I'm wondering if either of these would help give the soup a better flavor.

Maybe it's just that I don't really like vichyssoise or potato-leek soup in general. Or cold soups for that matter. Or pureed soups, either, now that you mention it. Huh. Mama Engineer loved it, though, so that's what really matters.

Operation Catering-for-Mama: Success! While I probably could have done something like this before culinary school, I definitely recognized how much more confident and relaxed I felt. That's definitely affirming. Pats on the back all around.

Ok, who's up for some breakfast barbecue?!

Butternut Squash and Pivotal Life Events

Since this is the first time in six years that I'm going back to school in the fall, you'd think I'd be all aglow with nostalgia over little autumnal details that don't get noticed when September is just another month on the calendar. In point of fact, life has been so non-stop these past few weeks that I've barely had time to do much more than scarf down a powerbar while counting my bags to make sure everybody made it off of the bus together--much less notice the geese squawking to each other on their way south or kiddos off to school with new lunchboxes. Actually, now that I think back on it I was ALWAYS too busy to notice these things while I was ensconced in the studious life. It wasn't until I graduated and started working in the Real World that I suddenly found myself looking up and thinking, "Seasons! Oh WOW! Totally forgot about those."

The one thing I HAVE been doing a lot of is laundry. Cooking is a messy business, my friends. Those pearly white uniforms don't leave much to the imagination. I come home looking like I personally took it upon myself to clean the face and hands of every toddler in Boston using only my apron and coat sleeves, and smelling like...well, like an industrial kitchen. Or perhaps several industrial kitchens.

Luckily, what I'm doing is a lot more fun than forcing cleanliness on errant preschoolers. Many of you have expressed disbelief that classes can actually last a whole eight hours and have asked me what we do, fer goodness sake, with all that time? The answer? I really don't know. I get to class with the afternoon sun slanting through the big plate-glass windows and glinting crazily off of every stainless-steel surface (that is to say, all the surfaces) and then I look up and it's almost 11:30. Somewhere in there, I've sat through a lecture, prepped and cooked some sort of food-based concoction, sampled said concoction and those of my classmates, and helped clean the kitchen. Then I stumble home smelling of several industrial kitchens and try to remember to take off at least my apron before burrowing beneath the covers.

And this is so wonderful to me. I had a lot of fears before I started, but I'm feeling more and more that this really is exactly where I'm supposed to be right now. In many ways, this feels more like remembering than learning. "Of COURSE that's how you hold a knife." "Riiiiight, beat the sugar stuff until I get ribboning--got it." (Ok, I admit, I'm still a bit shaky on the on the whole emulsification thing. "Emulsa-whatty?")

I also really struggle with not knowing where I'm going. Very scary. You know me--I like my lists and my 5-year plan and my ducks-in-a-row. As much as being in the kitchen feels like home, it's hard for me to really just stay present and recognize that this, right here, is good for me. And it's good for me all by itself, without needing to make it into something more. "Something more" like...oh...how about Pivotal Life Event On Which My Entire Future Hinges. Yeah, like that. No pressure.Heh heh heh...

Eeeeenyways, I've been meaning to share with you this fantastic dinner I made for my good friend B. a while back. It was only when we sat down to eat that I realized that all the major ingredients going into the dinner had been bought at the farmer's market, harvested from friend's gardens, or snipped from my very own porch garden. It was a really good feeling. Like toes wiggling in warm socks good. And it helped that this dinner happened to fall on one of the first truly crisp autumnal nights of the year. We lit some candles, opened a bottle of wine, and dug in.
Butternut Squash Soup

1 butternut squash--peeled, de-seeded, and cut into cubes
8 small potatoes--cut into cubes
1 onion-diced
corn kernels from 4 cobs
3-4 cloves garlic
fresh sage, oregano, and rosemary--chopped fine
2 1/2 c. vegetable broth
1 c. soy/rice/regular milk
1/4 c. white wine

Toss squash and potatoes in a bit of olive oil and roast at 450-degrees for about 45 minutes.

Sautee the onions and garlic until onions are soft. Add white wine and simmer until wine is reduced by half. Add the herbs 3/4 of the roasted squash and potatoes. Add broth and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer, and simmer for 5 minutes.

In a food processor, puree the solids with just enough broth to make the soup pour-able. (Or if you are in possession of a submersion blender, use that!)

Combine the puree, remaining roasted squash and potatoes, and corn in the pot. Add milk. Salt and pepper to taste.

This is awesome served with a few chunks of goat cheese and a few splashes of tobasco sauce.

I heart my food processor

Beet and Apple Salad

4-5 beets--peeled and sliced
2 apples--sliced and tossed with a few teaspoons of lemon juice (to prevent browning)
1/2 c. walnuts
Parmesan Reggiano
A few handfuls of field greens
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tsp Dijon mustard
6 Tbsp good olive oil

Sautee the beets in a bit of olive oil until tender--about 20 minutes, if I remember correctly. (Alternatively, before peeling or slicing the beets, you can roast them in a 450-degree oven wrapped in foil or boil them in water.)

While this is happening, measure out the vinegar and mustard in a cup and whisk until combined. Add the olive oil and whisk until combined. (Hey, guess what, guys?! This is an EMULSION! A temporary one, though, so you may have to re-whisk before serving.)

Put a handful of field greens in a purty dish, layer on the beets, apples, and walnuts. Sprinkle with a tablespoon or so of the dressing and shave Parmesan over the top with a vegetable peeler.

Rosemary Flatbread

One recipe of thin-crust pizza dough--recipe HERE.
Several sprigs of rosemary, leaves removed and chopped coarsely
Kosher salt or sea salt
Good olive oil

When preparing the dough, do not separate into two balls of dough. Spread the dough onto a piece of parchment paper into a roughly rectangular shape about 1/2 inch thick. Cover and let rise for at least fifteen minutes and up to an hour.

Pre-heat oven to 500-degrees.

When ready to bake, brush the top of the dough with olive oil and sprinkle on the rosemary and salt. Use the flat of your hand to gently press the salt and rosemary into the dough--GENTLY! You don't want to deflate the dough too much.

Bake on a sheetpan (or baking stone) until the top is golden and dark brown in places--10-15 minutes. The dough will puff a bit and you might get a few big bubbles. Serve warm or room temperature. This will keep for a few days in a tightly sealed container, and you can re-crisp in a 250-degree oven.

Fall? Really?

Ouch, where did September go? Has it really been three weeks since that last post? What a busy month it's been: culinary school starting, house-sitting, wedding-going, Ben Harper show attending, autumnal adjusting, America's Next Top Model watching....precious little sleeping, though, I can tell you that. Ah, sleep.

Well, things are in the air, my friends. I've got many stories and recipes and pictures to share with you. This weekend? Maybe? Pretty please, oh elusive Gods of Free Time?

In the meantime, here's a little preview of what I've been up to these past few weeks:

Citrus Tart
I gotsta practice my pate brisee a little more (super shmancy name for pie crust, don'chya know).

Potato Rosemary Tots
Yes, there was a classier name for this recipe, but they came out looking like...well...classy tots. So there you have it. I felt they deserved a little carnival cone presentation, given their humble appearance.

Crepe Quiche Cups
The filling is a spinach mushroom quiche (with lots of cheese, of course)

And a classic potato-leek soup (a.k.a vichyssoises when served cold), kicked up a notch with some pesto.

Food: Sausage, Barley, and Alien Soup

At first we were afraid. Very afraid. Imagine, Emma the Innocent is innocently chopping vegetables for a nice pot o' sausage, barley, and mushroom soup. Engineer the Brilliant is expounding on vector-based something-or-other, which involve moments of gobbledegook and forces corresponding to jibberish. Emma the Innocent nods sagely and pulls another parsnip from the grocery bag....or DOES she?! Screams of terror! Vector-based forces collide in moments! Counter attack--we'll EAT him out!
When that proved too crunchy and tasteless, we decided to make friends. Here's the Engineer and his new friend communing.
Aw, shucks. We're gonna miss that little guy!And then we decided to sacrifice him to the Gods of Hunger and put him in our soup pot. As if in comic retribution, the resulting soup was bitter and lacked depth of flavor. I've made this soup before with wonderful, no-leftovers-left-over results, so I can only conclude that parsnips are not a good substitute for carrots (which I loathe) in this particular dish. The whole time I choked down my bowl, I kept thinking, "Dang. I really just want the taste of potatoes in this." So next time? Potatoes.

In an attempt to salvage the rest of the pot, I tried sprinkling my next bowl with a healthy portion of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. (Cheese can never hurt, right? Though I was worried about wasting my lovely Parmigiano Reggiano...) While parsnips still are definitely not the best choice for this soup, with the addition of cheese, the soup went from "inedible" to "acceptably decent." It wasn't until days later while reading "Umami: A Taste By Any Other Name" by Rowan Jacobson (published in The Art of Eating, Issue No. 72) when I realized that what was lacking in the soup--and what the Parmesan made up for--was the flavor of umami.

Umami literally means "the essence of deliciousness" in Japanese, and is a legitimate fifth taste with its very own taste buds alongside those responding to sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. At its most basic, the flavor of umami comes from the amino acid glutamate (of the ill-famed MSG additive). The umami flavor can perhaps best be described as 'savory' and is found in protein based foods where the protein has begun to break down--like aged and cured beef, anchovies, soy sauce, and, yes, you guessed it, Parmesan cheese. In fact, the little tiny white crystals in Parmigiano Reggiano are granules of an amino acid with umami flavor. As Rowan Jacobsen says in his article, "Whenever a soup or sauce 'needs something,' chances are that something is umami--and, chances are, a Western cook will mistakenly add salt instead." Oops. Guilty. Too bad I didn't read that article until after I'd made the soup...

Here is the soup recipe for your very own experiments. Unless you feel like playing around with umami, I'd recommend leaving the parsnips to their alien conspiracies. The original recipe (found HERE) calls for celery and carrots, but since I don't like those things, I leave them out. I might try adding potatoes for a little more body and starch next time I make it, but I've also made it a few times with the recipe exactly as I've written it below and loved it. Enjoy!

Sausage, Barley, & Mushroom Soup
Makes 4-6 one-cup servings

• 1 large onion, diced
• 4 links of turkey or chicken sausage (spicy or sweet, as you prefer)--slit each link down the center and remove from casing. Break into crumbly pieces with your fingers. (Or you can chop them if you're grossed out.)
  
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 tablespoons fresh thyme, chopped
• 1 1/2 cups of portobello or baby bella mushrooms (I use 1 carton from the store)
• 5 cups shiitake mushrooms (about 1/2 lb), stems discarded and chopped (this is best when mushrooms are in season and you can find them at farmer's markets. Otherwise, I add a second carton of baby bella mushrooms.)
• 1 cup barley
• 6 cups chicken stock
• Salt and Pepper to taste

In a large stock pot, saute the onion in a few teaspoons of oil until soft and translucent. Add the sausage and cook until the sausage is browned. Add garlic, bay leaf, and thyme and stir until garlic is fragrant. Add mushrooms and cook until mushrooms just begin to sweat and shrivel. Add chicken broth and barley.

With the lid off, bring the soup to a boil. Once boiling, cover and reduce to a simmer. The soup is done when the barley is tender. If you have quick-cooking barley, the soup will be ready in about 15 minutes. Regular pearl barley will take about 45 minutes. Check seasonings and add salt and pepper to taste.

WeightWatcher's Notes: I use Al Fresco Chicken Sausage in this soup, which is 70% less fat than regular sausage. It comes in a lot of good flavors and the quality is good for use in soups like this. Depending on the flavor you get, one link is 3 - 4 points. The pot usually makes about 6 cups or more, so a serving is about 3.5 points for a one-cup serving. Depending on the type of sausage you find, you should double check the points. The total for the entire pot of soup before adding the sausage is 6 points.

And don't forget, Parsnip Aliens have feelings too.

Food: Holiday Festivus with Emma and the Engineer

On Christmas Eve at the abode of Emma n' the Engineer and with many friends in attendance, a festivus was had and, yay verily yay, it was good. This was the first Big Production meal I have ever prepared, and I was a bit nervous. We're talking appetizers, side dishes, main dishes, vegetarian dishes, drinks, and (of course) dessert. With the day itself looming on the horizon, I suddenly realized that pulling this whole thing off was going to require some Planning and Preparation. My list-making, organization-obsessed, multi-tasking little heart was filled with glee. Keep in mind that this is the same little heart that spent whole afternoons as a child organizing and then reorganizing the desk in her room, and who looked forward to buying school supplies every Fall nearly as much as she looked forward to Christmas.

My good friend R. and I had a grand time coming up with the menu. After much trolling of the Internet and a smattering of ideas thrown back and forth, we decided on a Cross-Atlantic Portuguese-Brazilian Dinner. Here was our final menu (click on the name of the dish to link to the recipe):

DRINKS:

• Caipirinha
• Quentao
• A Portuguese or Brazilian Wine
  

STARTER/SIDES:

• Green Beans with Coriander and Garlic
• Empanadas-- vegetarian (with hearts of palm)--I came up with my own recipe for this, loosely based on THIS recipe and also THIS one, and THIS dough recipe. I'll do a separate post about the empanadas cuz they were quite an...adventure to make, shall we say.
  
• Broa (Portuguese Cornmeal Farm Bread)

MAIN:

• Portuguese Potato Dumpling Soup (with Kale)-- vegetarian
• Portuguese Style Poached Chicken (with Lime, Chili, and other South o' the Border Seasonings)--loosely based on THIS recipe.
  

DESSERTS:

• Custard Cups

Like a dufus, I had a few too many caipirinha's and "forgot" to take picture of a lot of the dishes, but here's the run down of how the food part of the night went down and a few pictures of the pictures I remembered to take.

Drinks: The caipirinhas were FIERCE. Wowzas, did they knock your socks off. It wasn't until R. was actually preparing them that we fully realized that the drink is essentially all cachaca, a Brazilian brandy made from sugar cane, with a little sugar and lime thrown in there to take the edge off. Barely. We ended up adding a good dose of Fresca (classy!) to the drinks to make them a bit more drinkable. Even so, we all agreed that caipirinhas brought back ever-so-fond memories of Spring Break beach parties.

We had the quentaos after dinner as we reclined around the living room in various states of comatose. This is a drink that I would definitely have again--the spices are very similar to mulled wine (red wine is actually an ingredient in some variations) with some of that lovely cachaca. Also like mulled wine, it's served warm and would be quite nice for a cozy winter afternoon on the couch. I imagine a mug of this would also be an excellent antidote to insomnia, or at the very least you wouldn't mind being awake at 2:00 in the morning as much after you've had a few healthy gulps.

Ironically, we ended up drinking a South African wine with dinner--Mountain River 2003 Pinotage/Shiraz, a whooping $7.99 at Trader Joe's. While I was looking for Portuguese wines, I overheard another customer asking the wine steward for recommendations for a dinner of enchiladas and other South American dishes. The wine steward recommended this wine with such a glowing review that I had to try it. The wine was a deep red and very full-bodied. It had a deep, mellow flavor with just a touch of spice that really did pair well with all the flavors in the meal, but also didn't overshadow the food. I did find one bottle of a Portuguese wine, but we didn't end up opening it at the party--did I mention that the capirinhas were FIERCE?

Starters/Sides: The green beans were nothing super special. Blanched green beans drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with garlic and coriander. The recipe says to serve these cold or room temperature after having marinated for a day, but I didn't get my act together in time and also for some reason the idea of cold green beans with this particular meal didn't feel right to me, so I served them warm. (By the way, coriander was the surprise spice of the meal for me. I've never really cooked with coriander, but really liked it in the empanadas and the soup.)

The empanadas were a big hit. I'll do a separate post on them in another day or so and describe the whole preparation process. They're essentially little pasties or turnovers--a savory filling in a pie crust. I made them the week before the party, froze them, and then baked them right before dinner. The picture here is of an empanada right before I baked them. I really wish I'd remembered to take a picture after they came out of the oven--they were all crisp and golden, the kind of food that makes your mouth water just looking at them. The crust turned out well--nice and flaky, buttery and crisp. For the filling, I used onion, plum tomatoes, hearts of palm, corn, tomato paste, and spices (cayenne, chili powder, cumin, coriander, salt). The prep work is a lot of trouble, but it was really worth it. I think my guests and I would have been happy with just a plateful of these little empanadas!

The broa was kind of a disappointment for me, I have to admit. It's a cornmeal bread, so I knew it would be pretty dense and probably wouldn't rise like a regular wheat loaf, but I imagined the bread to be moist, crumbly, and springy like southern-style cornbread. Instead the loaf was more like a hockey puck--dry and dense. Sliced thin and spread with butter, the bread was decent, but I was still let down. I'm not sure if I didn't something wrong or if this is just the way the bread was supposed to be. I did a lot of searching on the Internet and found lots of recipes but few descriptions of how the final loaf was supposed to look, feel, and taste. From the pictures I found, I think the loaf is supposed to be rather flat (like mine turned out) but not quite as dense. More like a country hearth loaf than corn bread. I could probably figure out a better loaf if I had the urge, but I'm not a huge fan of cornmeal, so this will probably remain an unsolved baking mystery. By the way, I have an entire loaf and a half frozen in my freezer, so if you're still curious to try this bread despite my description, let me know and the loafs are yours!

Main: Poaching chicken is my new favorite thing. I do it in my slow cooker and it comes out perfect every time. (OK, it's come out perfectly all two times that I've done it.) The meat is moist, flavored throughout, and literally falls off the bone. For this chicken, I prepared a marinade using THIS recipe from the Boston restaurant Chez Henri, only substituting 1 tablespoon of chili powder, 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, 1 teaspoon of garam masala, and 1/4 tsp of cayenne in place of the achiote powder. (Achiote powder is a kind of sweet South American spice similar to chili powder--I couldn't find it in bulk at our co-op and didn't want to cough up the dough to buy a whole jar at the grocery store.) Instead of roasting the chicken as in the recipe, I poached it in the slow cooker with about a half cup of chicken broth, a few shots of soy sauce, lime juice, several whole quarters of limes, and a head of garlic with the cloves separated. Mmm, mmm, good. (P.S. I'm also planning another post on poaching whole chickens, but let me know if you want more detailed instructions before then.)

The only error in my otherwise well-timed meal prep was the time I allotted for preparing the potato dumplings for the potato dumpling soup. I plum forgot how gosh-darn long it takes for large potatoes to cook through when you're boiling them. (The thirty minutes suggested in the recipe was NOT enough for my potatoes, by the by. I probably would have been better boiling them for 45 minutes or so.) By this point in the evening, our friends were starting to arrive and I was feeling a bit frazzled. I thought I could make do with slightly undercooked potatoes, but it turns out that undercooked potatoes don't mash very well or even take very kindly to being mashed at all. Ah, well. So we ended up having Portuguese Half-Pureed, Half-Chunky Potato Soup instead. And it was delicious. The broth was light, pleasantly starchy, and well-flavored with garlic, salt, and coriander. I'm used to loading my soups up with all the veggies in my fridge, so I had to really exercise restraint on this one. I stuck with my recipe and only used onions, green onions, and kale...oh, and the potatoes, of course. I've never cooked with kale before and was at first a bit intimidated by the mounds of leafy greenness taking up half my counter space. Like spinach, I stripped the leaves from the woody stalks, rolled them lengthwise a handful at a time into a long cigar-shape, and cut cross sections about an inch thick. This gives you ribbons of kale about the length of your hand and as wide as a finger. It looks like a LOT of leafy greenness, but once you submerge it in the broth, the greens wilt down into a more reasonably-sized state. I thought the kale was a bit rubbery, like seaweed, but this was not unpleasant. It was actually very satisfying to have something with a bit of chew in every bite. The bitterness of the kale also balanced well with the relative sweetness of the broth and the onions, and the whole soup was warm and filling. (In retrospect, I think I would have cut the kale into smaller, postage-stamp-sized pieces instead of the ribbons. Pieces this size would be less cumbersome when spooning the soup into your mouth.)

Dessert: And last but not least, the custard cups. These were so good that a lot of us burned our mouths rather than wait for them to cool completely. The puff pastry made a crisp and buttery cup for the custard. (FYI, I decided to leave-off making my own puff pastry for another dining adventure, so I got a little help from my friends at Pepperidge Farm for this one.) The custard was smooth and creamy, flavored with vanilla and a hint of lemon. This was my first time making custard, and I definitely recommend THIS recipe for anyone else out there looking for something new to serve. You can also caramelize the tops under the broiler or with a brulee torch for an added bit of elegance.

Since the Engineer and I were leaving for holidays in Minnesota the day after our party, our lovely friends reaped the reward of what leftovers there were. To everyone that came to the party, we were so happy to see you and spend time with you during the holidays. And to everyone else near and far, if you ever find yourself in Boston on Christmas Eve, feel free to stop by--we'll be here cooking up something fabulous!