My first year I made sweet potato crepes with a bourbon (Makers Mark) cream cheese filling and a roasted praline sauce
The setting had flowers in a clear vase with 7-up to keep the dubloons and beads bobbing
Year 2 I made Shrimp Creole Arincini
boiled shrimp in Zatarans made a shrimp stock used the NewOrleans trinity for the risotto base coarsely chopped the shrimp and added to the risot and rolled around Mozzerella breaded lightly fried served on a fresh creole sauce...
Table had a fresh tower mosaiac of La. Mardi Gras colored veg....baby eggplants, lemons, okra on a styraform cone in a brass pot with a head of garlic on top and purple kale lining the form....I interspured red chilis, thyme, bay leaves Wish now I had taken pictures.
I was hired 2 years ago to work 1 on 1 in a kosher Jewish house (3 sets of pots and pans)
3 hours weekly to teach whatever came in a Farmer's CSA bag...subscription usually 12-17 items you never quite know what to expect.
It has been a wonderful challenge.....That's
what I do very well. I can look at ingrediants and tell you different things you can do with them or give me a format ie
what kind of equipment is available, what ingrediants, how many people, what is it that brought them together, etc... Black trumpet duxelle on hot buttered crouton for 600 at the Beard Picnic (2 burners)
I love the challenge, that's what turns me on. This past weekend I cooked for 45 at a girl scout camp 3 hours from where I live.
They needed B L D for Sat and brunch on Sun
Breakfast by 7:30 so they could set off with their bag lunch to hunt shrooms all day. (These are adults, some vegetarian most into good mushroomy foods) Dinner at 5:30 Brunch at 8:30. I made Brioche dough Fri night and bourbon soaked raisin rolls, Black trumpet fritata with light tomato sauce, fruit, yougurt granola. Lunch humus wrap with portabellos artichokes red peppers, an apple, gorp, juice, and butterscotch brownie
Dinner edemames and crudite with Thai peanut sauce on the tables. Shiitake risotto, shiitake sauce, teryaki chicken, eggplant, wasabi napa slaw, pineapple and bananas sauteed with brown sugar, orange, butter over icecream with ginger icebox cookies.
Brunch ....more brioche, caramel pecan rolls today,Biscuits on table, Large fruit bowl, yogurt granola, hash browns with chanterelles, poached eggs on english muffins with porcini duxelle (light on porcini), pork(fresh ham) wiht jonathon apples roasted, a savory puff with black trumpets, potatoes, reggiano, onions, thickened cream.
I've loved working with this group because they book me far in advance and they give me outrageous positive feedback.....So all this out in the woods in a girlscout camp kitchen.
Pretty fun.
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