NeroW

WARNING: LONG POST Making evening staff meal has now been my responsibility for the past several weeks. When I first started, they had me make staff meal, and I hated doing it. But now, I don't mind. I actually like it ( but don't tell anyone I work with, they will think I'm a freak ). Spending a chunk of the day cadging prep from people, asking for scraps, and "shopping at Stefan's" (Stefan is the garde manger) makes me feel like Milo Minderbinder, my favorite character from "Catch 22." Of course, some days I have no time to beg, borrow, and steal, and I have to bust out the fryer: chicken fingers and curly fries, anyone? No? Then what about chicken fingers and waffle fries? Mozzarella sticks? Onion rings with hollandaise? I am a big fan of "casseroles" (or other foods that can be baked in a hotel pan): lasagna, strata, tuna noodle, Bisquick-cheeseburger I also make quite a few quiches and frittatas. Quiches are easy because we have frozen pie crusts always on hand in case a member orders a quiche to go. The staff loves miniature corn dogs so much that the General Manager will stand in front of the line, with a fork, watching me put up staff meal, chanting: "WE WANT CORN DOGS! WE WANT CORN DOGS!" They also love the larger-sized pancake-wrapped hot dogs that I used to fry for them, until the broiler cook ripped me a new one for making his fryer stink like syrup and I had to drop the fryer in the last-minute rush before service. Kids' pizzas and "BBQ" chicken are also popular. There is always homemade soup made by the morning saute cook (this is the best part of my job). When he makes cream of tomato, I make grilled American cheese on the flattop. Some weeks I will spend part of each day theiving food and stashing it for Friday's staff meal. Like cooked bacon, cold cuts, and bread. Then I make a club sandwich that I named after one of the waitresses: it's basically a turkey and bacon club with a grilled cheese and tomato on the bottom. I always put out a tossed salad (shopping at Stefan's) and if I'm lucky, some cakes or individual tarts from the a la carte dessert selection (shopping at Stefan's again, thank God for pantry). I have a pretty free hand with staff meal, but when there are leftovers, I have to use those. Some common ones: Roma pasta, prime rib, salmon with Pernod sauce, chicken a la king, rice pilaf, mashed potatoes, filet mignon, chicken oscar, etc. Your basic country club food. In the summer, it's ribs, bratwurst, hot dogs, and burgers, until I take pity on them and get creative. No matter what I do, there are some FOH (and I will single out the FOH since it is them who complain, because they can't cook for themselves) who piss and moan about every single staff meal. They piss and moan, but they don't eat before they come to work It used to really bother me, every single time. Now, it only hurts when I have spent an hour out of my prep time to make something good, like a fat lasagna with individual garlic toasts on the Chef's best white rolls that I had to beg for. I think there are certain girls who do it just to be mean. I don't know if they understand how much time goes into staff meal, or how hurtful it is to be ridiculed for your efforts to make sure everyone goes into service with a full stomach. I almost lost it with one girl who screamed laughter into my face when I brought up the subject of Lent. When Lent comes, I want to try and be sensitive to that, at least on Fridays. I will spend extra time making sure that those who chose to observe Lent in a dietary fashion will have something to eat. Well, this biatch laughed in my face. That's when I eat my staff meal out on the loading dock.

I will never again 1). accept the assignment to make and decorate 500 roll-out sugar cookies for the Christmas formal, 2). use an 8 oz. ladle to measure the flour instead of a scale, and 3). use the ladle method twice before finally figuring out why the dough was so soft.

Thanks everybody. I am drinking tea until I follow Phaelon's suggestions

I will never again look away from the mandoline while julienning squash and cut my thumbnail right in half.

Hi everyone! I have been having a problem with my at-home coffee for a while now and I figured you could put it to rest. I live with my boyfriend and he has a regular 12-cup Proctor-Silex coffeemaker, the kind you have to put a filter in. It is nothing special but it gets the job done. He just bought it last year and we use it pretty much every day. We grind our own coffee that's roasted weekly for us by a friend of ours. Now, I usually put on about 4 or 5 cups of coffee and drink them over a period of an hour or so while looking at eGullet My boyfriend, who gets up early for his 1st shift job, makes a whole pot and takes it to the newspaper with him in a big carafe to share with the people who work there. By the time I have reached my 3rd or 4th cup, I have a weird SCUM floating on my coffee. It does not affect the taste of the coffee (I am heathen, and don't mind slightly "burned" coffee flavor). If I stick my finger in the cup, the scum doesn't separate, it just moves off to one side to make room for my finger. After a while, the scum will start to break up into little floaties which disperse themselves throughout the cup. It is very disturbing. Is it because of the continued heat applied to the coffee? Or is it this particular coffee? The first time I noticed it, I cleaned the coffee maker, and I have cleaned it regularly since, but the scum doesn't go away. My boyfriend doesn't get the scum when he takes the coffee to work in the carafe, and I have noticed that when we run out of good beans and have to buy something shitty to last a few days we don't get the scum either. Or is it something totally unrelated, like I don't know how to wash my coffee mugs correctly? Sorry for the long post, but I am really sick of the phantom scum. Thanks.

I love this thread. I will never again make 8 quarts of raspberry vinaigrette with fryer oil instead of salad oil.

My sous chef insists that if you put unripe avocado in a plastic baggie with cornstarch surrounding it, the avocado will ripen more quickly. Is this true, or what? Is there something in the cornstarch that could possibly ripen the avocado more quickly? I keep telling him that perhaps if he pulled all the avocado out of the 41-degree walk-in, that might solve the problem.

Internal clock at home, timers at work.

Yeah, I made it and the f***er didn't turn out. The custard was fine (never seem to run into any problems with those ) but the crust was gross. My companions liked it, but not me. What I did was what I usually do (maybe that's my problem)--grind nuts, add melted butter (chezcherie, I go for the "damp sand" too, "sticky mass" wasn't really accurate), add a little sugar as suggested on this thread, press and bake. Gross, gross, grosssssss! I bake at 350 and I even "temped" my oven to make sure all was well. I press the nuts in to a depth of about 1/4". Crust looks and smells fine when it comes out of the oven, but once it is filled, baked again, and rested overnight, it's sick. It crumbles all apart and doesn't even taste very good. I will try it one more time (with one of the recipes on this thread) and then move onto a different sort of crust for my cheesecakes. Of course, I suck at crust period, but we'll see what happens

Saturday night: Charcoal-grilled porterhouse steaks with compound butter "Fauxtatoes" Sunday night: Italian sausage lasagna Green salad Baguette

Well, we're here right now about to eat this menu, and the only difference is that this time there is Jim Beam in the cheesecake instead of Jack Daniels.

NM-- Whoops, I missed your inquiry a few months ago. It went over great--so great, in fact, that I had to revisit this thread because they requested the same dinner again tomorrow. That "fauxtatoes" dish is pretty damned good. So's the bourbon cheesecake, especially since I get to drink the rest of the bourbon. Thanks again to all.

Grilled American cheese on sourdough with our French onion soup. The club is famous for its soup. It's pretty good.

So I've tried it a hundred times--the proverbial nut crust for a cheesecake, or a savory "tartlet," or what-have-you. I toast the nuts, grind them fine, and then add my melted butter in slowly until I have a nice sticky mass. I press them into the baking pan, blind-bake them, then fill them, then cross my fingers-- And it never works out! Perhaps I should post this to the "culinary nemesis" thread. They are either too soggy, or too hard, and they never come clean from the pan. They taste good, but they look like crap. Tonight I'm making a cheesecake for a birthday party, and I'm going to make a nut crust. Repeat: I'm going to make a nut crust and it's going to work out. What's the best method? Where have I gone wrong? My name is Nero and I approve this message.

Tuesday was some sort of beef and shiitake pasta in a marsala-cream sauce. Yesterday was 4 chicken strips with honey mustard, and then later on a sesame-seed bagel with apple-smoked bacon, mayo, Dijon, turkey breast, L & T. Right now a tuna salad sandwich on rye with cheddar, L & T, and some homemade turkey noodle soup. One of the cooks spends all day making soups. E-meal today was chocolate-chip pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon, but I skipped it so I wouldn't pass out in an hour during service. And a Coke.

Dean, I already know you just ate the bourbon and goat cheese and gave the rest of the shit away.

A few pieces of apple-smoked bacon. E-meal was chili mac, broccoli in cheese sauce, green salad, bagels, muffins, fruit salad, and chickens stuffed with wild rice. I had some of the chili mac and half of a bagel with cream cheese. And about 4 fountain Cokes.

In Chicago, the bathroom at the Bar Louie (on Chicago Ave.) is wholly bizarre. The walls are entirely mirrored, so while you are taking a leak you can look in front of you and see your own ass. "Wow, my ass sure looks fat when it's all smushed down on a toilet seat, doesn't it?" A nice one in Chicago is at the Standard Club. It has all the extras, like cologne, and hairspray, and lotion, and best of all, bobby pins. There is a horrible one at a little gyros/hot dog place. I can't remember the name of the joint, but I believe it's on the corner of Division and Milwaukee, right next to that big Fifth Third Bank. Generally, I'm not one who thinks that the condition of the bathroom is an indication of the condition of the kitchen (many times these 2 rooms are cleaned by entirely different people), but this one was so foul that I would make an exception to my rule. There was no TP, no PT, no running water (so the lack of soap didn't make a difference), no toilet lid, and the floor was damp. There were cigarette butts all over the tile and the lightbulb was burned out. Also, it was so small you couldn't sit on the loo with the door closed.

Hi, I am going to be catering a Christmas party/open house for a woman who owns a wine, coffee, and high-end food/kitchen store here in Kalamazoo--W.J. Upson's is the name of the place. She is a friend of my mother's and that is how I got the job. She wanted to use me last year but I told her I wasn't ready. I had not completed my education yet and had no practical experience with large parties. Well, this year I suppose I am ready. It's a very nice party in a very nice neighborhood and is well-attended by what passes for "society" here in Kalamazoo. Translate: maybe there will be other nice jobs hiding in this somewhere. Obviously I want to do well. The service is buffet-style (no passing of trays). Of course, she takes care of all the wines, which is good--if it were my responsibility, we'd be drinking Gallo. I have a few questions: 1). I have provided her with a list, very casual, just "brainstorming" some ideas as far as what I could do. She was pleased and impressed with the list, but noncommittal as far as specifics. The party is the first Sunday in December. When should I start pressing her, or should I not press her at all? 2). She seems to think that I should provide the budget. To me, this is backwards. When she asks me for a budget, does she mean a food budget, or a labor budget? Because I will work for wine and coffee If she were to nail down specifically what she wanted to serve, then I could work my numbers from there. But I feel it should be the other way around--she tells me what she wants to spend (judging from past years, it's a lot), and I work within that parameter. We come up with the menu together. Is that correct? 3). This woman has never been happy with her caterers, and in past years she and her husband have done all the cooking themselves to avoid disappointment. This is what makes me certain she is very "hands-on" and would want to participate in menu planning. This also makes me feel that inevitably, she will not be happy with me, but that is not a topic of discussion for eGullet. Shall I send her a nice, business-y letter, thanking her for her consideration, and suggesting a meeting with her and her husband, maybe sometime in October? Just to start the ball rolling? 4). How does one charge for these events anyway? I expect to spend a lot of time on it as I am somewhat of a perfectionist. I also expect to be able to order some of the food through my work, cutting costs a bit on her end. Do caterers prepare spreadsheets for their clients? Or something less formal? What do you guys charge? Is it hourly? There will be about 100-150 total at this party throughout the day. Does amount affect what I would charge her for my labor? As you can see, I am completely new to catering, but I am confident in my skills and that I can do a good job. Any suggestions as far as catering etiquette are MUCH appreciated. And of course, since this is eGullet, canape suggestions are welcome as well. Thank you.

Thank you everyone for the ideas . . . Gordon, I wish we had foie gras. Haven't seen it there yet. I was supposed to make do with whatever we have on hand, which is a lot, but still, it's limiting. Toliver, ditto on the tasso ham. There was another recipe I wanted to use that had tasso ham in it. Marlene--ditto on the Brie! We don't stock it. I think we have every single other cheese on the planet (well, within reason), but no Brie. My Chef does not like it. He SO's it for upgrade cheese trays, and that's the only time it's around. Dano--taking the gougeres idea and changing it to profiteroles, here is what the Chef chose from 10 or 15 items on my list: Miniature cheese custard/souffle things: goat, cream cheese, and Maytag. Baked them in mini muffin pans with a walnut crust. These will be served cold on a warm crostini, with an arugula leaf, a toasted walnut half, and a warm Port reduction Seared tuna brochettes, tuna is marinated in a wasabi-heavy mayonnaise and then grilled to rare. More wasabi to dip. Chorizo and roasted bell pepper "profiteroles."

Danny-- It is a small party with a full dinner service (about 25 - 30) and someone else is producing 2 cold. I like your gougeres idea and was thinking along those lines. I have never stuffed a gougere. What's your method? No endive.

Hi everyone. I need to come up with 2 hot appetizers for tomorrow night's President's Dinner at the country club where I work. They need to be nice. There aren't really any limits as far as ingredients, we just don't have a lot of specialty shit lying around like caviar, smoked salmon, etc. I will have ample prep time. Here are a few ideas I have: Miniature Bleu Cheese Custards (in mini muffin tins) with a warm Port reduction drizzled on top right before service, on little toasts Some kind of crostini with artichoke puree, maybe some cress, radicchio or arugula, with lightly seared beef tenderloin Cubes of tuna (we have that cryovac "Ahi" stuff) with a wasabi-based mayo. I don't know if these will be any good with our stock tuna. Salmon "cakes" (silver-dollar sized) with a lemony-yogurt sauce This one's from Epicurious: miniature Yorkshire puddings (in mini muffin tins) with spicy tenderloin and a mustard sauce Chicken and beef sates (maybe marinated in a spicy yogurt?) Other than this, I am stumped. I would like something impressive. If anyone has any suggestions, that would be appreciated. BTW, I believe these apps are meant to rest on a table, not to be passed. I would like them to be as un-messy as possible as our GM is fanatical about his carpet. Thanks eG!

Our Exec Sous was sanitizing his station after service one night and without looking he stuck his hand in the sanitizer bucket (which was actually dirty fryer oil that the broiler cook had set down next to his sanitizer bucket). He also had no longterm ill effects. Personally, I will never again grab a red hot ladle to stir a sauce, and then try to rip it off my hand when it sticks to my thumb and index finger. That one took a few weeks to blister up. I have found that egg whites work well on burns. At least it cushions them from the heat somewhat.

I haven't cooked dinner in a hundred years, damn it.

How did it turn out? What was the baste? I have had a few days off work because of a wisdom teeth extraction. It was annoying because I was unable to eat for a few days. The pain was not the worst part of it--it was the inability to chew. I also had a suprise weekend houseguest in the form of my friend from c. school, Greg. This was not as inconvenient as it may sound because Greg is the type of houseguest that disappears for hours, off somewhere reading a book, or snoozing on the back porch. Saturday, the first day I could eat beyond banana-and-milk-smoothies (delicious, but repetitive), Greg and I decided over lunch what to make for dinner. Got to love someone who does that. We had charcoal-grilled flank steak, soaked for a few hours in garlic, onion, lime, cilantro, and a little EVOO. I made a grilled corn/tomato/roasted poblano/lime relish with a little cilantro. A quick saute of bell peppers and onions, some sour cream, warmed tortillas, beans, and cheese rounded out the fajita meal.