Prepping for the Democratic National Convention

This week is the final week of preparation before the Democratic National Convention, we have been filling our freezer for weeks with hundreds of our most popular Hors D' Ouevres this week the push is on to get ready for the 6500 we will feed on Sunday the 24th, followed by the 8000 we will serve on the 25th, with another 2000 to 3000 on the 26th and 27th. Now we are beginning work on the fresh components. Salad dressings, special sauces, etc. I spent all day roasting poblano peppers, peeling them and grating Manchego cheese to prepare 2 gallons of "poblano pesto". My buddy next door spent several hours stuffing olives with seasoned lamb, we will need 2000 of them next week.

The picture on the right is step 2, stuffing the olive, next it will go into the freezer overnight and tomorrow it will get coated in flour, egg and bread crumbs, finally on the day of the event we will fry it to a golden brown and send it out on a decorated tray as an appetizer.

Some of the parties are strictly hors d' ouevres, others will have "action stations" with a chef in attendance preparing the foods while you wait. We can't afford to make you wait very long as the lines are liable to be very long and so we will be moving very fast to serve you to get to the next guy in line. Most every party we involves passed appetizers and one of the fun things to do is make a garnish for the serving tray. Next week I will take some photos of the things we make to garnish the trays.

A look behind the curtain

I've been cooking for a number of years and I thought I knew quite a bit before I became employed in my current position. I am one of 12 to 15 chefs who work in a major catering kitchen in Denver, CO. Our chefs come from varied backgrounds and bring with them a vast amount of experience. Classical cuisine and all the latest ideas pass through our kitchen on a daily basis, but the most fascinating is what I call "On the Fly cooking". You may have heard of it in a different way "Fusion" cuisine. From Wikipedia " While fusion cuisine is a general term for the combination of various forms of cookery, the concept can take several forms. One approach is regional fusion that combines the cuisine of a region or sub-region into a single eating experience. Of these sort, Asian fusion restaurants have become popular in many parts of the United States, often featuring Indian, East Asian, and South-East Asian dishes alongside one another and offering dishes that are inspired combinations of such cuisines." One of our owners spends agreat deal of time inventing dishes as he speaks with our customers. So on an almost daily basis the kitchen has to come up with a way to translate and then prepare the creation. Elements such as "pesto" have been changing for several years but it is confusing when you receive an order for poblano pesto and use pumpkin seed in leiu of pine-nuts. Today our usual scallion cornbread stuffed chicken breast became polenta stuffing with zuchini and queso blanco cheese. It will be interesting to see how it comes out tomorrow when I arrange it cold on a bed of mixed greens. Will it resemble Chicken wrapped sushi surrounding a center eye of yellow and green Zuchini with white and green flecks of Queso Blanco in suspension of the yellow polenta? Interesting.