1.16.2010

Day 8: A Day of Cooking

Thanks to my father, on December thirty of 2009, I got a client for New Years Eve. The client loved my food and called me two days ago to see if I was able to do a dinner party for them Friday January fifteen (today). I of course said yes.

With every client the first thing I do is find out how many people will be eating. Second I ask if there are any food allergies or anything that the host/hostess doesn’t like. Then I ask them what type of gathering it will be, drinks and appetizers, a formal sit-down dinner or an informal family style night. After all that information is exchanged I then proceed to create personalized menu options they can choose from. They can choose one of the set options I give them or they can mix and match from all the options and create their own menu.

On Wednesday night, I sent them three options. On Thursday morning  they repl ied saying they chose number one. The informal family style dinner was only for seven but they asked me to cook for eight because they love left over’s. I didn’t complain and started to prepare for my day of cooking.

The menu they chose was as follows:

Dates, goat cheese and cashews salad
Rosemary & Lemmon Chicken
Bacon infused rice
Penne Pasta with a Portobello Mushroom Sauce
Bread Pudding topped with Brandy Mascarpone

As with every event I have to cook for, the first thing I do is set up my shopping list. After I know what I need, I figure out what I already have so that I can use it. Then I go to my different suppliers and gather all the ingredients still missing. When everything that will be used is in my kitchen I set up my prep list and get to work.

I am lucky enough to have two amazing parents who believe enough in me to let me live in their house for free (again) and promote my work to all their friends. So in my parent’s kitchen I started cooking today’s meal. Usually I would only do the basic prep then spend the last three to four hours at the client’s home finishing the meal. Tonight the hostess only wanted me to put the finishing at her place. In this special case, I pre cooked almost everything at home (I made the pasta at their house) then took it in disposable containers to their place.

I got there an hour and a half before dinner time. I found the serving plates I would need and started setting up with the great help of my new assistant (High five, high five!!). When all was said and done I had a happy host & hostess and five people id never met before who all left with my contact info. It was a hectic day but in the in the end a very productive one.

Maybe next time ill figure out a way to write down my five hundred words before I start cooking instead of waiting to for the day to end

Oh well January sixteen will have to live with two posts, the fourteen says it’s no biggie…..


Word Count: 536
P.S Proof reading before posting is your friend. Thank God for the Edit button!!!!


1 comment:

  1. from the high fives i'm guessing you and you assistant got into the vino at some point of the evening... or is she now high fiving while sober these days?

    ReplyDelete