The little Family Meal that could (but didn’t).

Every Saturday is a level 4 buffet for us. Two people were in this buffet group, plus the chef. Despite the fact that Buffet is preparing a beautiful spread that could, essentially, feed the whole school, family meal must still prepare food for the classes that don’t make it down, and the people in the restaurant who do not have a chance to eat the buffet food.

In short, we also had 2 people plus the chef, and we busted our asses off for a few hours to get family meal done, when practically NONE of it was eaten. We did get it to the classes in levels 1 and 2, but I think they still came down to eat at the buffet.

Anyhow, we made Pollock (baked and fried), quinoa, string beans, and few other things which we reheated form a previous family meal (though they were very fresh).

Anyhow, with there just being two people in family meal, we pretty much had to get cracking. Steve tackled the Quinoa, and while that cooked, he worked on some veggies. I had prepared the baked and fried fish. Chef Karen cut the filets, and I deep fried about 75 pieces and prepared about 20 baked. The fried ones were simply dipped in an egg mixture and then coated with panko bread crumbs, and fried til golden. Of course they were tasty, though I must be honest… I didn’t even have a piece. They were thick cuts, so after they were fried, we needed to bake them for about 10 minutes until they were completely cooked. Salmon can be left slightly pink, but certain other fish shouldn’t be raw (Pollock is, a white fish).

The baked one took a bit more effort. I prepared a bread crumb topping with fresh chopped chives, basil, and parsley, tomatoes, S&P and olive oil. Chopping herbs is pretty time consuming. Not difficult, just time consuming. But after the mixture turned to a gritty green wet looking sand concoction, I brushed some mayo on the Pollock and pressed some of the green bread crumb mixture on top.

What was weird was I was going step by step in the recipe, but each subsequent step contradicted the previous step. For instance, the first step is to mix all the ingredients that I listed for the bread crumb mixture together. So after I chopped everything and combined I moved on to step two. Step two was to take the chives and mix them into the mayo?! They just told me to mix all the herbs into the bread crumbs?! I figured either way it was the same thing, but it didn’t make sense. Then, the very next step says sprinkle some tomatoes onto the fish?! It already told me to mix the tomatoes with the bread crumbs as well?! I figured everything was fine, but I mentioned it to the chef. I told her I was confident it was all the same and it will be fine, but I wanted to let her know. She agreed that it was fine, but she said she noticed these inconsistencies and forgot to mention them. I should have read the recipe before hand.

Family meal is great because the recipes are relatively simple. We don’t have time for an extravagant showing. We just whip together relatively basic things, in large quantities and very quickly. When I say basic, I don’t mean S&P only. The other day we had lavender chicken, Israeli couscous, lamb meatballs, etc. But the chicken was just lots of chicken and all the herbs and spices thrown together. We didn’t remove the rib bones, or manchonner the legs and wings.

It’s also a little boring, but it’s extremely productive, particularly when everyone eats and we overhear, “wow that was a tasty family meal today.”

Well, this is our last week of it before we move on to production.