Lunch turned out great, and everyone was happy, especially the boss, who stuffed himself silly, then spent several hours periodically complaining about how full he was. He was also drowsy as a result of the foodfest, which was a good sign for me: I know I've done my job when I've induced food comas. Below is a pic of bread (Charles's recipe) that I had formed into something in between loaves and buns as a way to make "Italian" garlic bread. In the pic below, the buns—which had been frozen—have been plucked out of the fridge, where they'd been thawing all night. I have to laugh at how horribly misshapen they look.
Next—a very simple, humble insalata caprese. I had made homemade pesto to go along with the salad; you'll see it in a moment.
My darker-chocolate panna cotta. This one doesn't have any whipped cream in it:
My much lighter and fluffier "mouce," which is closer in spirit to a proper mousse au chocolat in terms of being bubbly; this is because I incorporated whipped cream into the mix:
I may have explained this before, but just to remind you: a mousse gets its bubbly-yet-firm structure from eggs; a panna cotta (which looks a lot like a flan) gets its structure from gelatin. And I used a lot of gelatin. To bring the panna cotta back to a mousse-like consistency, I had to add whipped cream, which is naturally bubbly. You can't just stir the whipped cream into the mix: as with the eggs in a chocolate mousse, you have to fold the whipped cream in.
Below: a shot of my homemade pesto, which did me proud today:
Lunch, phase one:
And finally, the food-porn angle:
My boss claimed a bag of leftover spaghetti sauce for himself, and one coworker took home the other remaining bag of my spaghetti sauce; I had also bagged up each individual bird's nest of pasta—ten bags in all—and all of the remaining pasta must remain in the office freezer at the boss's request, except for the three bags of pasta the aforementioned coworker took home for himself and his wife. I'm going to crank out some more pasta for myself this weekend and slather it with my pesto. I might even add some jumbo shrimp to the mix. We'll see. All in all, today's luncheon was a success. One of my coworkers is married to a professional chef, and he has, on several occasions, boasted about how awesome his wife's spaghetti is. I doubt I converted him away from that position with my own spaghetti today, but that's not upsetting: I understand why a man might be brand-loyal to his talented wife.
That was a hell of a lot of work, but it appears to have been well worth it. Satisfaction from both the effort and the satisfaction of your diners is the ultimate outcome for any chef. I stand in awe!
ReplyDeleteIt was indeed a lot of work, but I paced myself well by doing the work slowly and steadily over the course of the week. There was no mad rush at the last minute, so I had a good time prepping.
ReplyDeleteThe bread does indeed look like a freak of nature. I can picture it achieving sentence and immediately turn on you, screaming, "Why did you do this to me?!"
ReplyDeleteJust kidding. It looks fine. One might even say... "rustic."