tino27
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Posts posted by tino27
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Agreed, absolutely don't apologize. You learned more practical information in doing this one event than any catering manual could teach you. Catering for large groups involves so much more than just being a good cook. Until you experience the highs AND the lows, you never really know what and how to plan.
It looks like everything came together nicely though. Congratulations on your event!
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If you are making your sauce ahead of time, then yes, definitely drain the pasta or you'll thin your sauce. If you end up doing a saute treatment to them after boiling, a little bit of pasta water will actually help the sauce to emulsify (note, a little bit of pasta water, not a ton). You're best friend for fishing out ravioli is one of those Chinese wok spider tools. It has a large surface area and lots of holes for the pasta water to drain through.
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Do the ravioli ahead of time and place them in a single layer on a cookie sheet to freeze them. Once they are frozen, you can then just toss them into a zip bag (or some other container). If you let fresh pasta sit in the refrigerator, they will end up sticking to whatever they are sitting in and when you go to cook them, the pasta will have turned all gummy. To cook the ravioli, don't bother defrosting, just boil straight from frozen. Unfortunately, I speak from experience on the gummy refrigerated pasta. Plus, freezing the ravioli means that you could make them today and have them ready for when you need them. If you cook them from frozen, you want to boil them in salted water and then transfer them to a pan where your sage butter sauce is already prepared and toss them to coat. They won't get any color that way, but your only alternative would be to do them a batch at a time in a saute pan (which due to the delicate nature of the pasta can't be done in bulk).
For your crostini, toast them up the morning you need them, let them cool to room temperature, and just keep them in an airtight container until you are ready to spread the tapenade on. With only one appetizer and the amount of kitchen help you think you will have, you can probably get them done just prior to service. You probably won't need 8 people to pass one hors d'ouerve, have 3 of them preparing and plating the crostini and the other five passing them out to guests. I wouldn't worry about the bread not being warm for service. After all, you are making the tapenade ahead of time and keeping it refrigerated until the time of service, right? The cold would negate the hot.
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Sadly, Florida, I fear you are right. What struck me as ironic was that the three or four differernt restaurants where I've seen them on the menu and ordered them, they were all equally as bland and unseasoned.
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Wow, I had forgotten about this topic until I saw it pop back up to the top due to the last comment. Thanks everyone for the comments so far.
I guess I should've been a little bit clearer in my original request. The problem I am having with grits is when I go out someplace (like a Denny's or a local breakfast mom and pop place) and order grits, not when I make them at home. I'm sure that many of you are probably correct in your assertions that what I am getting are instant grits. My basic question centered around the fact that every time I order grits from one of these types of restaurants, they come completely and wholly unseasoned. It just seemed completely at odds with the fact that the Moons Over My Hammy breakfast sandwich that came with said grits has enough salt to kill a small horse. The dichotomy seemed odd to me and when I started asking around, friends who were in the know insisted that if you order just plain grits, that is exactly what you get, cornmeal cooked in water/milk, no salt.
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All the advice regarding the food has been good, but given that this is a "formal" event, I'm going to assume that this is going to be a sit down, plated dinner? Which means that you are going to have to plate each diner's dish up in the kitchen and then have food runners deliver the plates to the guests in the dining room. From a sheer manpower perspective, you'll need 2-3 people plating food and another 3-4 people running the plates out to the guests. Will the crostini with tapenade be a passed hors d'ouerve? Or are you planning on simply placing trays of them out and letting guests serve themselves? Toasting the crostini ahead of time is an excellent idea, but slathering on wet tapenade too early will cause even toasted bread to soften over time.
I'm sure on your budget you can get volunteers to help out with the plating and service issues. I just wanted to make sure you knew the enormity of serving 100 guests isn't just about successfully cooking in volume.
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Darienne --
Here are two links to the last two years of gatherings so you can check them out for yourself.
First, 2009 in Kansas City
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/125401-report-2009-heartland-gathering-in-kansas-city/
and 2008 in Chicago
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/117871-report-2008-heartland-gathering-in-chicago/
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I'm also happy to do a bread workshop for attendees and members of Tammy's community. From what I remember of the common house, it's big enough where several groups could be simultaneously doing workshops.
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I am also good for any weekend in late July / early August as well ... whichever weekend can accommodate the most people.
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Tammylc, thanks for reminding us of your willingness to host the gathering in Ann Arbor for 2010. After spending the last three years away from Ann Arbor and given the fact that we have someone who has stated several times now that she is willing to host it, I move that we make it official and agree that Ann Arbor is the place to be for the eG Heartland Gathering 2010.
Can we get some consensus?
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*Bump*
Bueller? Bueller?
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NancyH, to my taste buds, the sweet glaze on the chicken wings reminded me a lot of the sweet chili sauce that is sold under the Mae Ploy brand name. And with that much sugar, it would certainly caramelize into a nice glaze when cooked on.
Boy, those were really good wings. I really loved them being paired with the fresh cilantro.
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Great write-up, Edsel! I also attended the meal Edsel described (and in fact, my rendition will be coming out on my blog -- see my signature -- on Thursday morning, 2/4). While I agree that things weren't as spicy as I personally like them, I think on the whole the flavors were incredibly well balanced. Interestingly enough, I had no idea that the pork in the cold pork salad with lettuce cups was made from liver. It tasted just like pork to me.
If you live in Cleveland or are driving through, definitely put Ty Fun Thai Bistro on your Places of Interest list.
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brioche ceviche anyone?
Only if they are in the shape of scallops!
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I agree with BeeZee, as far as electrical appliances go, you'd be better off checking with the college first. My dorm was build in the mid-60's and nothing other than a hot pot and a mini-fridge were allowed in the individual dorm rooms. And to be honest, the hot pot was actually quite versatile. You might also think about a crock pot, too. He could make up enough meals that he could simply reheat for the rest of the week.
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I have started to paint my risen loaves with water and a pastry brush just before placing them in the oven. This seems to work as well for me as hot or boiling water in the bottom of the oven. Add a second painting of water about 10 minutes into the baking time.
At 10 minutes into the baking process, any ovenspring you hope to achieve will be complete. Repainting the loaves with water isn't necessary at this point. The nice thing about throwing a 1/2 cup of hot water onto a pre-heated pan is that you can do it quickly so as to minimize heat loss in the oven.
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Hey everybody ... some great looking breads on this thread. I just wanted to add a few items that might help some of you new bakers.
First, love love LOVE the idea of creating steam to help with the ovenspring of your breads. Instead of using ice cubes, however, use hot water (as in out of your sink's tap). The problem with ice cubes is that they have to go through two phase changes in order to be useful as steam and thus sap more energy out of the oven than when you just use already hot water.
Second, I cannot recommend using instant yeast enough in almost all of your recipes. SAF Red was mentioned in one of the posts and I either use this or Fleishmann's and have always had success. Given that a 1 pound bag will last you the better part of a year if kept in a sealed container and in your fridge or freezer, it is a bargain compared to buying single packets of active dried or fresh cake yeast. You can get instant yeast locally at Sam's Club or on-line at either King Arthur or on Amazon.
Third, time equals flavor. When doing a classic French bread recipe where the only ingredients are water, flour, yeast, and salt, you need to give your dough as much time as possible to develop flavors through enzymatic action. While retarding the dough overnight in the cooler will give you nice results, I find that a better use of my time is to make a poolish (equal parts by weight flour and water with just a pinch of instant yeast) in the morning before I go to work. By the time I get home it is nice and bubbly. Add that into the remainder of ingredients in your recipe and you will be rewarded with a lovely complex, slightly sour taste to your finished product, whether they be baguettes, batards, fougasse, epi, boules, etc.
If you want to see how a poolish is made and what it is supposed to look like, check out the entry I wrote for the last eGullet Heartland Gathering in Kansas City earlier this year, Focaccia Is Fantastic
Sure, it is focaccia and not French bread, but the technique is the same for both.
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The only problem with using your oven to do the second rise (aka proofing in your case) is that you'll have to take the rolls out of the oven in order to pre-heat it. By the time the oven pre-heats, you run the risk of over-proofing the rolls. My suggestion would be to do a 1 - 2 combo.
First, do the first rise in your oven like you suggested. This will get the dough at a really nice temperature as it transitions into the second rise. Pull the dough out of the oven and set the dial to the correct temperature to pre-heat it. Second, if you are worried that your kitchen might be too cold, after shaping and panning the rolls (I'm assuming you are baking these on a sheet pan, yes?), place it on top of an electric heating pad turned on somewhere between the medium and the highest setting. Cover the formed rolls with a tea towel (or two) to prevent a skin from forming on the rolls. Once the rolls are proofed and the oven is at temp, you'll be good to go.
Good luck!
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Whenever my family would go out to eat and my sister would order a salad, she always insisted on getting "Franch" dressing. We never knew if she wanted French or Ranch. Actually, I don't know that she knew the difference at that age either.
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After you bring the eggs and cold water to a boil, let them sit for one less minute? It sounds like they are continuing to cook just a bit longer after (or while) you are chilling them.
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In doing some archival work on my blog, I came across the write-ups I did for this year's gathering in Kansas City. Which prompted me to think to myself, "Did we ever decide on a city for 2010?"
Did we?
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You're asking two separate questions.
Why do you temper? Because you are mixing a hot liquid (usually cream) with cold or room temperature eggs. If you simply added the hot liquid straight to the yolks, you'd curdle them. By gradually bringing the temperature of the yolks up, you avoid that problem.
As for the second question, why not just mix everything together cold and then bake ... I'd be concerned that the sugar might not fully dissolve into cold cream. Not to mention that you usually scald the cream and then steep a flavoring agent into it (like vanilla beans). While cold infusion is certainly possible, it would take a heck of a lot longer.
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I don't think that a lot of restaurant owners and managers realize how much the widespread use of the Internet has really leveled the playing field, in terms of the availability of information. Now more than ever, everyone needs to be treated with respect because you never know who will write about it on a publicly searchable venue (such as a blog or eGullet). The fact that this thread shows up on Google search results page above even the restaurant's own website (if they even have one) is going to haunt them for some time. Like most of you, I search out information about a restaurant before going, especially the first time. Had I read this thread prior to my first visit, you can be pretty darn sure I wouldn't have even given them the chance.
Yummy places to eat in Akron, Ohio?
in The Heartland: Dining
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Todd, check out the blog in my signature. I write about all sorts of restaurant experiences (all price levels) in Cleveland, Akron, and Canton. If you have a specific question about a restaurant you've heard of that I haven't covered, please feel free to message me.