Tri2Cook

I have two catering jobs coming up in the near future. One of them is for a group of people that I know well. For a really (really) long time there's been a plating in one of the "...View of Plated Desserts" books that I've wanted to do and this seemed like a good opportunity as it's only for about 14 people. I don't normally worry too much about using recipes from books but in this case I would be using a specific plating design which is something I've never done. It's not a matter of trying to achieve cool points for myself, I just really like the design and would gladly give credit where it's due but I'm not sure how I'd go about it. I don't really want to walk out and announce "next we have a dessert designed by..." but I guess I could. Also, would not using the same dessert, just the plating, be disrespectful? Am I overthinking this and making something out of nothing? I realize they were put in a book and made public but I'm talking about a for-profit situation which may change the etiquette.

Yeah, I downloaded the BBC uncut. no-commercials versions of the entire first season and burned them to DVD. There's a surprisingly large amount missing in the FoodTV version. Gotta get them commercials in, wouldn't want to miss the chance to buy a spatutong (or is that a tongula?) without which I don't know how we ever managed to cook bacon. I liked "The Inn Chef". I agree with you on the new shows, "...At Large" is interesting sometimes, "...At Home" is pretty unexciting. Don't particularly care about the hair or "hot factor". If I worried about that I'd have to watch Giada. That's why I liked Made To Order. It was definitely high-end but the show still managed to be almost completely about the food and drinks. No major drama or dumbing it down. Plan the menu, source/research/discuss the ingredients, breakdown of what he's trying to achieve in a kitchen setting (no precise recipes given but that doesn't bother me) and let us hang out for the plating.

They're from a short puddle-jumper hop north of Sioux Lookout, ON. I know what you mean about the fiddleheads but since it's not the season I'm ok with it.

Ok, so I'm going to test one idea I had tonight. I'm going to try a warm mousse (using agar and a cream siphon) of Fiddlehead puree under a piece of the fish. The flavor of the Fiddlehead is mild and local. I may even put a small piece of crispy back bacon on the fish, pickerel wrapped in bacon is a popular local app so I would basically be dressing up the familiar a bit. We'll see how the test goes.

Sit and serve. The people I'm doing it for are friends of the owner of the restaurant where I work and the owner is also my partner in the catering business (which is seperate from the restaurant... I just work there, I'm not a partner) so we're going to do it at the restaurant on a closed night. I'll be in my own kitchen and we have three of our servers who wanted to make the extra money before the holidays coming in to handle that job. Not fingerfoods only. They mentioned to someone else that they thought 2 or 3 amuse would be fun because you can't really get that sort of thing anywhere around here but the meal itself will be a full plated main course or two smaller courses depending how I decide to handle the beef/bird request. Edit: Be careful what you wish for! I just got a call saying the local chapter of the Lion's Club wants us to do almost the same thing for them (my menu but they did set a per plate cost they want to stay within for this one). It's for fewer people (probably 12 - 14) and 2 days before the other one. I'll be doing it in one of the club member's home so that will be more challenging. They want small apps/cocktails ~5:30pm and dinner ~7pm.

Well, a guy a short distance north of me (very short distance but you have to fly in because the ice on the lakes isn't deep enough for the winter ice roads yet) is licensed to sell his catch so I can get it in from that morning's catch but, in the interest of not getting caught with my pants down on the day of the job, I don't really want to depend on getting it day-of. The weather can be too unpredictable this time of year and a canceled flight that day would be a problem. My other choices would be caught day-before or frozen. The frozen is coming out of almost-freezing water into sub 0 F. air, filleted, vacuum bagged and frozen in blocks of ice. He puts the bags in plastic pails, fills them with almost freezing water, lets it freeze (which doesn't take long) and it's ready to go. I've used a lot of his fish, fresh and frozen, and it's always excellent but I've never used it uncooked. I always thought raw freshwater fish was a risky venture?

Sorry, read that wrong. I probably can't help you much then. Nuts for <$5 lb. would be reason to dance where I live.

Brainstorm Session 1: Pickerel (Walleye) Fillets I have access to super fresh local Pickerel (Walleye) and want to incorporate it into an amuse or small salad. As you probably know, it's a really delicate, mild fish. I started out thinking of incorporating local wild blueberries but even that may be too much for this fish. I also considered a small salad of local Fiddleheads (they're out of season so I'd have to use some that I blanched and froze but all fruit/veg is out of season here now, we're buried in snow and cold temps for the next few months) topped with a piece of the fish. Maybe a super-light tempura or a small piece in a bowl with some sort of delicate puree or broth. Anyway, that's where I'm at with this one so far, very much at the beginning. Any ideas, suggestions, other directions to explore with it are welcome and appreciated.

You're buying 1000 lbs. of walnuts by the bag at a grocery store? Probably too late for this year's baking but next year I'd do some google searching for a few walnut growers and ask about a large-volume direct price. The price per pound HERE matches your old price at the one pound level and drops off quite a bit as you buy more. Around $6 per pound for the 25 lb. box.

In Search of Perfection is good. Good Eats is usually good. Made To Order... I always watched it if I was home when it was on, Guy Rubino's plates were worth sitting through the less interesting parts, but that one's gone now. That's about it for me on FoodTV.

I'll have to give that a try for pizza. I've "aged" danish dough and used it for cinnamon rolls before. I checked it (smell and taste) daily until it had a flavor that I was happy with then used it that day. I was apprehensive about letting anyone try them because the sourdough taste was obvious to me and I wasn't sure if that would be considered a good thing in a cinnamon roll but they got nothing but good reviews from those who ate them. I've done it several times since then mainly just to be sure I wasn't going to kill anybody with it. Everybody that's had them is still alive and happy (I tell them up front what they're getting). In fact, I have an order for a few dozen to do next week for a friend so I'll get the dough going tomorrow for that. I'm still not at the point of trusting it enough to sell them to people I don't know though, I stick with fresh dough for that.

This may be a little too far from what you're wanting to do but you could make a cold soup of fresh orange or tangerine juice, a sweet sparkling wine, a little sugar if needed and a little fresh basil. Pile some caramelized fennel with orange or tangerine zest in the middle of the bowl, sneak in a few mandarin segments somewhere if you want more fruit going on, pour the soup around and top it with a quenelle of olive oil ice cream (if you have a way to keep that cold on-site), sweetened olive oil whipped cream or foam (if you have a cream siphon and, like me, don't care if foam is still cool or not) or just a drizzle of a really fruity olive oil. Actually, I'd probably work something crunchy in there somewhere. Some type of sweet croutons, a tuille or a disc of some sort between the fennel and cream if I was using that, or something.

Errrr... well... that depends how well it goes off. Actually, that's probably not true. I've posted more of my failed and less-than-spectacular experiments and ideas here than I have my successes. I figure there are at least hundreds if not thousands here that can do what I do well as well or better with their eyes closed but some of my messes are in a league of their own. I got an "inside tip" that they're hoping to see at least a couple amuse before getting into the serious stuff which is fine with me, those are fun. I think they're picturing a choice of the chicken or the beef but I'm leaning more towards incorporating both on the plate or doing them as two seperate courses. Since it's my decision, I'll be going with one of those plans. I'm sure I'll be popping in for suggestions and brainstorm sessions before it's over... especially when it comes to wine selections.

I've been waiting for one of these since I started doing catering and finally got one. Three weeks advance notice multi-course dinner for 20-24 (they'll let me know the exact number by the end of this week), no menu to be approved... they want to be surprised, money is not an object... what it costs is what it costs. The only stipulation is that they would like chicken (her choice) and prime rib ("small end rib roast" if you prefer - his choice) to be included in it. I can do them any way I want as long as they're on the menu. Should be fun.

Awesome as always Rob... they all look good and the "leftovers" sounds delicious.

Sweet risotto, custards, crepes, flambes, sweet soups...

I'll have to give it a try, I love ginger. I simmer it in water, add a little honey and drink it as a tea pretty often so this should be really good.

Thanks for the kind words everybody. It's how I spent my b'day, cooking for somebody else. The cake was for a catering job I had on friday. I had some backup decorations made in case I couldn't get results I could live with using the sugar. I know... experimenting with something new on a customer's dime isn't nice but it's the vision I had for the cake so I had to at least try. I really enjoyed playing with the sugar, enough so that I ordered Notter's book and a few tools today. I'm not sure how far I'll get without a class but I'm going to give it a shot.

Rob, I wish I had a bunch of cool sounding technical info to share but the truth is I just boiled 2 cups of sugar and 1/2 cup of water until I got the color I wanted, dipped the bottom of the pan in cold water and went to work with it. For the cherries, I speared dried Bing cherries with bamboo skewers bent into an L-shape, dipped them and stuck the skewers under a heavy pan at the edge of a table and let them drip onto paper on the floor. I used the same pot of sugar for everything. I just let it cool until I could pull a strand from it and wrapped that around the metal handle of a whisk to make the coil. I wasn't as happy with the spun sugar, got some drops in there with the strands, but I was just using a regular dinner fork to throw the sugar between 2 wooden spoons.

Thanks, hadn't thought of that but it's a great idea. I think I may go that route.

Top to bottom... Chocolate-Morello Cherry Mousse Flourless Chocolate Biscuit Morello Cherry Mousse Flourless Chocolate Biscuit ...sides sprayed with chocolate, topped with dejaq's dark mirror glaze from the demo, decorated with my first ever (so don't be too hard on me) attempt at sugar work. Caramelized dried cherries, sugar coil and spun sugar.

THIS. Or rather, this is the end result. The molds are just individual clear plastic cones. I don't actually need 100 of them but at that price I don't mind ordering that many if the shipping isn't too ridiculous so I'm going to shoot them an email and find out once I decide what else I want to order to make the $100 minimum (unless I find them elsewhere which I haven't managed to do so far).

I need some clear plastic cones for molding various cold items and chocolate, prefer in the 3.5"-4.5" range. Within Canada would be great for faster delivery and avoiding duties but I can do U.S. too. JBPrince has them but also has a minimum order amount to Canada and according to their shipping info doesn't give the shipping cost to Canada up front, just bills it to your card when they figure it out... that's scary to me.

What I'm trying to do specifically is experiment with flavoring aerated chocolates. I've got the aerating technique down now and get really nice results with white, milk and dark chocolate and want to take it another step and incorporate flavors into the chocolate. I don't temper the chocolate to be aerated, it's either used as is for plate decoration or coated in tempered chocolate after it sets so tempering isn't an issue.

That makes sense. Thanks! Soooo... if a person wanted to go the all natural route for flavoring straight chocolate with fruit flavors (raspberry for example) they'd basically be out of luck? P.S. I hope this post and my last post don't sound as critical to anyone else as they do to me. It's not intended that way, I'm sincerely trying to learn more about chocolate here.