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I Need Help with a Menu

Tim_Sutherland_52834

There is a good chance I'll be hosting an event at my house for ~35 people in early June. The event is a farewell tour for my wife's boss, who worked in Dallas ~15 years ago. My plan is to do a Texan/Southern take with passed heavy hors d'oeuvres. There will be enough seating for all to sit at once, but the food will be plated so it can all be eaten standing. I will do most of the prep leading up to the event and culinary students will help prep and plate on the day. (I know a number of Chef Instructors)

Hors d'Oeuvres
Texas Chicken Skin - stolen form ChefSteps at an action station to draw people outside.
Chicken Fried Steak with Sausage Gravy - on skewers on a platter.

Meal
Melon Soup - clarified chilled melon soup with compressed melon garnish. Plated in clear cups passed on platter.
Deviled Eggs - from MC on spoons.
Shrimp and Grits - popcorn pudding on shrimp cracker, on platter.
Fish - the Texas State fish is Guadalupe bass (rare fresh water fish, looks like smallmouth or spotted bass) and I would like to do cold dish along the lines of the 104F Salmon but with Bass. I need some help. The dish will be preplated.
Smoked Brisket - SV brisket served with white bread, spicy pinto beans and potato salad. I will have an East Texas BBQ sauce on the side for the Philistines. The dish will be preplated.
Texas Whiskey Pecan Tartlets with Grapefruit Tequila Sorbet - the sorbet with be at an action station with a baking steel on dry ice.
Mini Apple Strudel - apple filling in phyllo pastry.
Cheese Plate - house made beer cheese and dried fruit on a platter self serve.

A bowl of the State Snack (tortilla chips and salsa) will be left out and refilled as needed.

A cocktail along the lines of a Miss Blyden will be the signature cocktail for the night (it uses the State Plant).

The number of dishes is a lot for the number of people and staff, but I do like to push myself. A cold fish dish would be nice but I can always drop it as I do have a shellfish plate. Any comments are appreciated.

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Comments

Chris_Young_80640

Hmmm, you might try a light curing and smoking of the Gudalupe bass. Could be really nice sliced thin and served as a cold dish. Maybe paired with pomme rosti?

Tim_Sutherland_52834

Thanks @Chris, my thoughts are to do a Texan play on a crudo/ceviche, a light smoke is something that I didn't think of but it will work well. PolyScience have a smoked ceviche recipe that I can play with.

Tim_Sutherland_52834

A productive day in the kitchen with, amongst other things, 60 eggs swimming at 72C and 25lb of smoked, SVed brisket.

I had seven responses from LCB students/recent graduates when I asked for help at an event where all the food (11 courses) is prepared using modernist cuisine techniques and equipment - three confirmed for the weekend of prep, the other four did not respond to an email requesting a aye-or-nay if they could help; two appeared at my doorstep at the appointed time while the third was never heard of. (Grumpy old man hat on) and the youth of today wonder why they can't get a job or keep one.

My day was made when I showed my helpers the yolk of a MC Deviled Egg (72C for 35 min then iced). You could see their brains ticking over that a cooked egg should have hard whites and soft yolk and this was not the case in front of them. Their expression and description of the texture of the yolk when tasted makes me still have a smile on my face. Maybe there is hope for the next generation.

Tim_Sutherland_52834

Today was only 13.5 hrs preping for me and 8 hrs each for my 2 helpers (unpaid). It is at times like this that you think 11 courses for 35 people with only three people prepping, plating, and serving is too much - 385 plates (plus two serve your self stations) is not too much is it?

8 lb of baked beans (11 ingredients), 40 orders of chicken feet (Marcus will have nightmares for weeks with the 3 hrs he spent boning the feet on a table not quite tall enough. He then skinned 40 chicken thighs for the skin ( I had the pleasure of skewering the 76 orders of skin on the bamboo skewers)). Once you work out a pressure washer can clean a sieve quickly, a 36 banana custard does not take long.

It could have been worst, I could have been Loretta yesterday who blanched/iced (3 mins each) 4 grapefruit 12 times then vacuum compressed them 10 times for semi candied grapefruit as garnish for dessert - she turned up on time today and she is a real trooper (she drove almost an hour one way to get here for the privilege).

It's times like this after been up for 18+ hours (3rd straight day), knowing you don't have enough time to complete all the prep you need to do, thinking of 3 items that could be added to the menu (knowing that the guests would be blown away one course of with warm food between bread and cold beer/wine) that I might consider working in a restaurant again.

Tim_Sutherland_52834

The most fun of this dish was not rolling the dates flat to form a sheet, or piping the goat cheese onto the sheet and rolling in to an 11" log. Waiting for the log to freeze was easy and so was cutting it. Getting the sticky date on to the fork was simple once I worked out any thing the date touched it stuck to. The most fun was splitting the pistachios in half and then playing Operation to add them as garnish.

Tim_Sutherland_52834

Well the event was held last night and it went very well and a big shout out to Loretta and Marcus for their help. Being a glutton for punishment I pushed the menu to 11 courses plus Torilla Chips with two salsas and guacamole on the side. Overall there were 400+ plates/orders of food sold in the four and a half hour event. Not bad for a group that met for the first time Saturday morning and for someone who graduated from culinary school in December (Loretta, who is a full time nurse and completed the degree to improve her cooking skills); one who started culinary school in December (Marcus) and me.

Not (yet) having a commercial size deep frier, I allowed bags of tortilla chips to be purchased, otherwise all the menu was from scratch.

Hors d'Oeuvres
Buffalo Chicken Skin
Grilled Cactus
Tuna Tartar
Chicken Chicharron

Appetizers
Chilled Melon Soup
Deviled Eggs
Shrimp and Grits

Main Course
Bass Ceviche
BBQ Brisket with Potato Salad and Pinto Beans

Dessert
Whiskey Pecan Tart with Banana Custard and Candied Grapefruit

Cheese Plate

Tortilla Chips with two salsas and guacamole on side, for those that may be hungry.

Hors d'Oeuvres
Buffalo Chicken Skin; from ChepSteps with a Celery fluid gel and blue cheese crumble.

Grilled Cactus; cut into skewer size slices, marinated for 24hr in a house made fajita sauce and then grilled, served with Crema Mexicana.

Tuna Tartar; prickly pear fruit (tuna in Spanish), pureed, strained, set in gelatine, diced and served with lime juice, jalapeno and salt.

Chicken Chicharron; MC puffed chicken feet - the surprise seller for the night, a few very picky eaters were asking for more - even after I told them it was the foot of a chicken.

Marcus Grilling

A Tough Spot to Grill

Loretta Frying Chicken Skin and Feet

Tuna Tartar

Appetizers
Chilled Melon Soup; watermelon, cantaloup and honey dew melon compressed and served with an agar clarified soup made with same melons. I had 8 litres of clarified soup at the start of service and sold it all.

Deviled Eggs; from MC with Tarragon garnish.

Shrimp and Grits; the cracker is made with shrimp jus, shrimp mince and tapioca flour, steamed, sliced, dehydrated and fried. The grits are popcorn boiled in butter and water, then strained. The most popular dish of the night - males and females both double grabbing from the tray.

Melon Soup

Deviled Eggs

Shrimp and Grits

Main Course
Bass Ceviche; Striped Bass bought whole, filleted, quick salt cure, marinated in lime juice and onions for 4 hours with smoke from a smoking gun added every 2 hours; strained and separated from the onions; jalapeno, concasse tomato, cilantro added to the fish. For service, an avocado slice (cut avo in half, peel the slice, on mandolin slice so the seed well leaves a hole in the slice) with the ceviche on top with grapefruit juice, grapefruit zest and cilantro as garnish, and tortilla chips on the side.

BBQ Brisket with Potato Salad and Pinto Beans; the brisket smoked for 7hrs at 65C then SV 63C for 72hrs. The potato salad was made as per MC, but someone added pickle juice with the pickled onions, and I was not happy with it, so six hours before the event I cooked more spuds added compressed pickled celery, mayo from the deviled eggs, burnt spring onion (that had first been vacuum infused in simple syrup) and a few other spices that I didn't write down in my haste. The pinto beans as per MC then tweaked for taste. I knew I needed bread with the BBQ and so at 3pm (with the event starting at 6:30) and no bread in the house or time to shop, I found the time to make 63 Shiner Bock Beer Biscuits (AP, salt, baking powder, brown sugar, grated frozen butter, whole eggs and Shiner Bock beer, reduced by half). The MC East Texas BBQ sauce was in bottles on the table for the non-Texans.

The wife of the Guest of Honour does not eat red meat, so I made a plate of Raw Cooked Gulf Shrimp with Chipotle Carrot, Avocado, Corn, Rice and Cucumber.

Ceviche

BBQ Plate

Bock Biscuits

Raw Cooked Gulf Shrimp

Dessert
Whiskey Pecan Tart with Banana Custard and Candied Grapefruit; Balcones Brimestone Whisky was used in the tart, the banana custard from ChefSteps (next time I'll add vanilla and/or spiced rum to the custard) and grapefruit semi candied as per ChefSteps but in the boiling water 12 times rather than the 6 times for the blood orange)

Whisky Pecan Tart

The cheese plate was the goat cheese, date, pistachio from the post above, with a selection of cheese and fruit as back up if anyone was hungry (for some reason no one was.)

My two helpers, Loretta and Marcus helped at the event with no expectation of reward, except for the experience. For their efforts I gave them each a copy of Modernist Cuisine at Home. Even at minimum wage that would not cover the hours they put in over the weekend, let alone last night.

My only problem is I now need to make the next event better than this.

seijoed

Nice job and great looking plates of food!

Jack_Mayer_85396

@Tim - most impressive! Congrats!

Yitzchok_Bernstein_88575

@Tim - looks awesome!

andrea.feldman

@Tim, my hats off to you + your amazing helpers! Every plate looks incredible. I hope you were able to enjoy the day a little (or at least try everything!)

Sumit__65166

@tim awesome stuff! you should have us all over so you can do this one more time

Tim_Sutherland_52834

You will need to give me some time as I only spent just over 50 hour prepping/shopping between 08:00 Saturday and 18:00 Tuesday before the event started. The first food was served at 18:35 and the last tray of goat cheese was still being passed at 23:15 as the last people left. The brisket took 79hr to smoke/cook which I did before I started prepping, so give me a weeks notice and I should be fine.

seijoed

I'm giving even more kudos to your helpers, they've never seen any of this before and had to work with

an onry old professional.

Tim_Sutherland_52834

Loretta and Marcus will never get enough praise. Loretta had used a vacuum chamber sealer before, but had not heard of Sous Vide. Marcus had heard and read about modernist cooking but had never seen the equipment in real life. I then start talking grams and Celsius; show them recipes only in bakers percentages, tell them to weigh an ingredient (not always 100% in the recipe) and scale the other ingredients off that (I quickly find out math is not a strong skill set of some people) and they didn't bitch, asked for help when they needed it, and worked hard - all that you can ask for in helpers.

Jack_Mayer_85396

Special kudos to your helpers @Tim! What a great learning experience for them as well!

Tim_Sutherland_52834

A few things my small team and I learnt were, in a battle between a VitaPrep jug and a regular Gray Kunz spoon, the spoon wins.

The side of the jug was smashed out and hot popped popcorn, butter and water were sprayed across the kitchen. In the jug's defense it was 5 years old and had jumped off the counter before. The blade has a nice divot while the spoon has a few light surface scratches.

2.2kg of chicken skins pressure cooked for 2 hours produces a lit bit of schmaltz.

This was in a 475ml container. I filled two containers and have close to 700ml of schmaltz.

Brendan_Lee_56950

You are one lucky guy!

John_S_Jackson_54823

Since this was a great success what do you do for an encore? I can hardly wait for your next project.

Tim_Sutherland_52834

I've got some ideas banging around in my head that I need to let ping around for a while, but an American Summer BBQ/Grill is what is bouncing the highest currently.

Brendan_Lee_56950

What did you do with all of the leftover thigh meat from the skinning?

Tim_Sutherland_52834

The thigh meat is in the freezer 2 per bag, 20 bags total. Bones in another bag for stock. The meat will most likely end up as sausage.

Brendan_Lee_56950

I think i'm going to try that skin recipe for a fourth of july party, was just trying to figure out what I'm going to do with so much meat but I think i'll just do some skewers yakitori style with some different sauces

Jack_Mayer_85396

@Brendan, that chicken skins and yakitori skewers sounds really good!