Abra

Well, Melkor, not exactly. A caterer prepares the food offsite, usually well ahead of time, often en masse, has a standardized menu, and delivers food to the event. As far as I know, only personal chefs cook everything fresh onsite, often with the client standing right in the kitchen watching, kids running in and out, guests arriving early and wanting to watch, and so on. Do you have something against personal chefs, or is it more a matter of semantics for you?

It's so sad that ImageGullet refuses to cooperate! I have a lot of really nice pictures that I can't wait to show you. But for now, let me give a little rundown of the week. I'll tell all about the Walla Walla gig. Just for starters, there were no Rice Krispie Treats involved! This was plated courses, served by pre-pubescent persons. Here's the menu: Passed appetizers: Mini Quiches with Caramelized Onions and Bacon Tiny Chinese Pork Tartlets Salad with Hazelnuts and Pomegranate Vinaigrette Rosemary and Golden Raisin Mini Muffins Chicken in a Cider and Mushroom Cream Sauce with Caramelized Apples Mini Pumpkins stuffed with Wild Rice, Cherry, and Toasted Pecan Dressing Edamame and Marjoram Succotash Carrot Cake (their request, baked for me by Chefpeon and hauled down there in boxes) Then tomorrow I'm having dinner guests. I'm trying to decide between a meal from The Cooking of Southwest France, because we've been cooking through it here, and there's a spotlight on Paula Wolfert going on right now, or an all-Dutch dinner based on Chufi's wonderful thread. Let's have a vote! What should I cook tomorrow for two food-loving friends? Then Wednesday I'm cooking for a client, a single woman who likes mostly vegetarian food. And then we'll have the run-up to a dinner up on Orcas Island on Sunday. My blog will end on Saturday, but we're going up on Friday, so you'll get to see the islands and the ferries, and you'll get to see me sweat. I need to make this dinner really impressive, and match the host's wines, which will be hard since I've never tasted any of them. He loves big, oaky New World wines, the $100 a bottle kind, whereas I'm more of a $25 Old World wine person. I still haven't figured out the menu, so I'll be fretting over that for the next few days, and asking for your advice. Any big, oaky wine lovers out there?

Ok, I guess I have to get involved here. I have a personal chef service, therefore I am a personal chef. For 4 years, people have been paying me to cook for them in their homes, sometimes a couple of week's worth of meals that I cook in a day, sometimes big parties that I plan for weeks. For big jobs I hire staff, kitchen help and servers. Small jobs I do myself. In all cases I create the menu, balance the costs so that I make a profit, purchase the food, and prepare it fresh, on site, to order. I cook food from any of the world's cuisines, and use any ingredient available to me locally or online. The buck always stops with me, whether or not I have people working with me on any given day. If I do, I organize their work, make sure they're on track, and oversee all aspects of the food preparation and service. When people have special dietary needs or requests, I research the requirements and ensure that all the food meets those specifications. I create new recipes for clients whenever that's an asset to the event, or whenever a client asks me for something original, so I test and execute new recipes on an almost daily basis. I hesitate to call myself a chef, but I think that hesitation is actually silly. I'm not a restaurant chef, and don't know how to do what they do. But I also think that few restaurant chefs could do what I do, without having to learn the business, just as I did.

Remember how Pogo sang, to the tune of Deck the Halls "Walla Walla Wash and Kalamazoo?" You don't? You're too young! In any case, this blog will take you from Walla Walla, not to Kalamazoo, but to Orcas Island, by way of Bainbridge Island. That's all the way from the extreme southeast corner to the absolute northwest corner of Washington. You'll see things you never imagined about Washington, and we'll cook and eat all along the way. As you might remember from my first foodblog, I'm a personal chef. This week I'm going to show you Extreme Personal Cheffing, as well as lower-case personal cheffing and just plain cooking. And I'm going to show you lots of beautiful parts of our state, especially if there's good food to be found there. Ready, set, go! A couple of months ago a guy down in Walla Walla asked me to do the food for his 30th anniversary party, in a church kitchen, with a staff of teenagers. There'd be no opportunity to see the kitchen before the event, it was a sit-down plated dinner for 50 (17 of whom were small children), and the crew would be kids from 12-15 years old, none of whom I'd get to meet in advance of the event. Oh, and no weird food, please! What would you have done in a case like that? If you were smarter than I am, you'd have gotten under the bed and sucked your thumb. Me, I said, sure, what the hell, why not? Thus begins our tale. Taking my husband with me for moral support, I set out for Walla Walla, some 6 hours away, with a car full of cooking implements and foods that might be hard to find in Walla Walla. It's quite a journey from Puget Sound. Now, I have a zillion pictures for you, but ImageGullet "is experiencing technical difficulties," so this first post is just to say hi and give you a little teaser about what's to come. As soon as I can get my pictures posted, we'll be on our merry way. I'm glad you're along for the ride!

My list of Dutch foods to make is getting really REALLY long!

Lucy, you have the best ideas. Warm vin de noix, I've got to try that. And it's starting to get cold at night here, so it won't be long before I feel the need.

Great blog, and great to see "the real you", as opposed to "headshot you." If you sing as well as you cook and write, you have a great future ahead of you!

Macrina. Essential Baking Company.

No, in the end the closest I came was the recipe from King Arthur Flour's baking book, because it already accounted for the moisture content of the pineapple. I was worried about adding to the Frog Commissary recipe, since I only had time for one trial. That will be the next carrot cake I bake, though, afetr this is all over. Actually, the cake I baked yesterday tastes pretty good today, after a night in the freezer, but I'm really glad to have Chefpeon's cakes to take with me. I have no idea what sort of mixer, pans, or anything I'll have available down there, and I think it's enough to produce the rest of a dinner for 50 in those circumstances without having to suffer Baker's Remorse into the bargain.

The brandied pear and cognac currant preparations contain no stock. I do the brandied pear with pear brandy, which might be a limiting factor, although it's probably also good with regular brandy. It's a fruit-based sauce, the cognac currant is a cream sauce.

I do brandied pear, cognac currant, and orange brandy chicken breasts, all of which are allium-free and any of which can be made ahead and spooned over at service. Do any of these sound like they'd work?

That animation is cool, Francois. How the heck did you do that? And could you explain the plating of the creme Anglaise? Is that a single serving? It looks lovely. Wow, lmf, Dayne is really kicking butt in the TFL depasrtment! His cooking is very accomplished, and the fact that he does all that just for you is stellar.

First let me say that I love carrot cake. I nomally make a lovely one, with nuts, and a lemon mascarpone frosting, and people rave over it. But on Saturday I'm doing an anniversary/birthday party where they requested carrot cake, and it has to look and taste perfect. Now, I'm a hot-sider by nature, but I do bake for my clients. Not pastry chef-quality stuff, but usually very nice, good to eat, freshly baked treats. But now I have to confess that having tested two carrot cakes including pineapple and raisins and excluding nuts and coconut, as requested by this client, I conclude that I'm not fit to bake this kind of carrot cake for 50 for a party! There are too many wet ingredients, the cake comes out so heavy and moist, doesn't rise well to make a nice thick layer, seems overwhelmed by icing, I have to confess to failure. My trial cakes were sad. Maybe subbing 1/3 melted butter as recommended above added too much extra moisture. For one cake I used part brown sugar, another possible source of heaviness and moisture. Sure, I'd serve the cakes I've baked to friends, but they just won't do for this gig. For another thing, getting a perfect, precise cut, even when the cake is frozen, is so hard with the cream cheese frosting. So, the mighty Chefpeon is coming to my rescue and baking the cakes for me, which I'll then proceed to drive 300 miles away to serve them. I must be nuts. However, I did make what I consider to the the perfectly proportioned cream cheese frosting, based on the King Arthur Flour recipe: 1 lb powdered sugar 8 oz cream cheese 3 oz butter 1 tsp vanilla couple drops fiori di Sicilia The last is my addition, and gives a delightfully piquant little thing to the frosting. But really, a carrot cake, the easiest possible thing to make, every housewife in America can make one, and I'm outsourcing mine. I'm hanging my head in shame. And I'm not eating another bite of carrot cake or cream cheese frosting for at least a week!

Ok, that does it. I'm coming up there soon if I have to walk. That pasta looks worth walking for!

Just to be sure we're clear here, the dessert I'm recommending is not linzertorte, but a cake inspired by linzertorte. It's a big presentation piece.

Wow, for sure!

Hurray, Jack paid more than I did! I can now officially retire as the forum's most extravagant turkey-fancier. I'll hand over my crown of feathers to you, Jack. But, uh, a 22 kilo turkey? As in a 50 lb turkey? Does that even exist? Not here, for sure.

Hmmm, I still can't decide. Ruth, your pumpkim parmesan bread pudding is really calling to me.....

Oh my god, that dessert looks awesome. Bitterkoekjes sound like they're made with bitter almond, which isn't much in use here. We can get bitter almond oil from a few online suppliers, but I've never seen the cookies. Come to think of it, maybe the cookies are available online as well, or maybe it would work with regular almond macaroons. That is just gorgeous!

Wow, cooking with vin de noix - now there's a use I hadn't contemplated. Lucy, what might you make with it?

For my money, you can't do better than Viennese Linzertorte Cake. It's beautiful and looks like a pro made it if you follow the directions exactly, it's delicious and no one's ever had anything exactly like it, it's zingy from the Chinese 5 spice in it. And it will serve 20, with small slices. But it's very rich, so that could be perfect. Or you could serve it with something else, if you want to give people a dessert choice. This takes pretty much all day to make, but benefits from a day or even two in the fridge.

I eat it almost every day, but the fat free kind, which is still amazingly delicious. Sometimes I eat it with a little vanilla mixed in, sometimes with a drizzle of dark maple strup, sometimes with some spicy applesauce. That's my dessert, 4-5 times a week.

Ah, there's nothing like a bunch of licked-clean pots to let you know what a good cook you are - brava! That gratin looks lethal, which means that I've got to try it.

Yes, it was WAY more than 3 cups, but it was just under 2 pounds, as the recipe specifies. My rule is, when in doubt, use the given weight. I didn't measure, but it was probably about 9-10 cups. Maybe because I did such a fine julienne?

I'm totally drooling over those eel rolls! I only see eel in tins, Japanese style, and I love that preparation. I wish smoked eeel existed in my world. Sorry, I had missed your previous explanation of Dutch brandy. I'll have to Google around and see whether it's available anywhere here.