CIA Caliber (that’s like elephant hunting ammo)

...or maybe anti aircraft rounds?

Soooo, as you may or may not be aware, we had our second and final buffet to prepare for. The buffet was on Saturday. I haven’t posted since my last buffet, because quite frankly, I’m pooped. That buffet took a lot out of us, but none the less, we had to get back in there and do it all over again. Of course we changed the theme up a bit. We wanted to bring it back to the classics. Focus on the details and produce a lot of small beautiful tasty items.

We did just that and some. In addition to about 5 different canapés, we had 3 carving stations, and some serious desserts. I didn’t know at the time either, but a canapé is basically a small appetizer or hors d'oeuvre. They are usually very intricate with a lot of detail.

Off the top of my head I can recall a few. We had layers of prosciutto on white bread, cut into rounds, with a mint mascarpone spread, as well as a dollop of this mixture on top with a ball of honey dew on top. They looked phenomenal. We had a seared and smoked filet sliced onto a slice of baguette with a dollop of gorgonzola cheese. There was a crab meat and avocado profiterole, which was really delicious. The crowd pleaser, hands down, was the duck leg confit over a bed of caramelized onion and chopped apple, with a slice of brie over a baguette slice. These were incredible!

In fact, as we were cleaning up, there was a student in the room adjacent to ours working on pastries. There are windows between the two rooms so he was watching me pack some of these away to take home, and he just pointed at them and was giving us the thumbs up. And so I offered him one, and he put two fingers up in the air, asking for 2!! He got em. That was a compliment in its own.

I went on a tangent… The production group laid out a platter of 3 kinds of sausages they made. Two were pork, one was lamb. They were all really tasty. Right behind that, Steve and I were at the carving station! We had an entire leg of lamb, 3 turkey breasts and an entire prime rib roast. Steve and I were slicing them to order and placing them on the plates. It was phenomenal. For the lamb, I made a fresh focaccia bread with rosemary, and we sliced that, drizzled a red pepper mayo on it with a few leaves of arugala, and I placed the lamb slices right on the bread. It was money.

We also blew it up for desserts. I spent probably 8 hours on making tiny pastry shells for canapé desserts. Some we filled with a lemon curd, and topped with fruits or swiss meringue (which took me about 20 minutes to pipe out, then we passed a torch over them leaving a beautiful beautiful lightly browned color. There were chocolate ganache with white chocolate swirls, napoleons with pastry cream and raspberries, puff pastry with pistachio ice cream scoops and Chef Rob’s famous tuxedo strawberries.

Oh, how could I forget? We had 3 different rolled/stuffed meats that we cooked sous-vide style. We made a salmon roulade, stuffed with a smoked trout force meat. For this, we flattened out salmon fillets, then layered basil and piped a layer of ground up smoked trout. We then rolled it in plastic, and then twisted it until it was a really tight package. When they were cooked we sliced it and presented it on a layer of aspic. They were gorgeous.

We also did a stuffed duck breast with a pork forcemeat, and boneless turkey legs with an herb stuffing. Everything was truly amazing.

Another chef came in and told Chef Rob that this buffet, and the last, were of CIA caliber. I was watching this chef as we were serving our buffet. He was walking up and down the table just examining… admiring our work. You could see he was amazed.

On Saturday we came in at 12 noon to finalize preparation for 8:30. There was no way we would have completed everything in time if we didn’t come in that early. We were rushing from pretty much the moment we got in.

Again, I have pics, and I will get them up, somehow.

We now move on to family meal. To be honest, I look forward to this transition. I have done so much baking in the past few weeks that I really want to get back into cooking the meats and starches. Chef reassured me that my baking was clutch and everything was fantastic, but I do look forward to hacking some meat, and tackling the mass production of entrée food. The current group of 3 in family meal have been making FANTASTIC family meals, especially compared to the previous levels before us. They have received many compliments, which is rare for family meal. I hope to carry on in their footsteps. On Saturday, the next group is planning an Italian buffet, and then they need to muster up the courage for another buffet. We set the bar high, but I have a feeling chef rob is going to take them higher! I hope so. We’re definitely tearing level 4 a new one.