News from the Kitchen Test Front

KITCHEN TEST PREPARATION

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in
practice there is" -- Yogi Berra

Last week was a crazy week of over-planning on my part. It is easy to get carried away. I wasn’t sure how to organize so many of us in the kitchen at once, so I had “on paper” separated each step of each recipe into Prep, Mix, Stovetop, and Oven sections. And as a followup I made little evaluation forms to record our pronouncements like judges at a food competition (not that I’ve ever been to a food competition mind you). It was hilarious because once in the kitchen I’m not sure we even looked at my plan and at the end of the evening, I forgot to pull out the evaluations.

The one exception to tossing the planning aside entirely was the shopping list we used beforehand. Obviously you need to know what to buy and the quantities before heading off to the market. The list was compiled assuming we would be producing one batch of each recipe on the menu, with the exception of the onion tart which we decided to not include at the last minute because of the complexity of preparation.

Paul and I split the shopping. We were able to find everything at the farmers market except the following: avocado, celery, sprouts, milk, nutmeg, mustard, butter, and red pepper. With the kitchen test scheduled on a Friday, we had to rely on a smaller set of farmers at the Thursday market rather than the larger Saturday market where we would have perhaps otherwise been able to find everything. We bought what we couldn’t find from local organic grocers.

Berkeley Bowl was a good source for milk and butter. Strauss (www.strausfamilycreamery.com) is organic and locally produced near Tomales Bay and previously recommended by Paul (see his response to the blog posting dated March 31, 2008). I thought the nutmeg would be a problem, but again at Berkeley Bowl, I found an entire rack of organic and local spices, Spicely Organic from Union City (http://www.spicely.com). The original source of the ingredients though is not indicated, so maybe it is not locally sourced, but locally produced?

You have to really read between the lines when buying anything other than directly from the farmer. Deciphering the labels can be tricky. For example, the mustard took at least a half hour of reading labels to finally find one produced locally, although I don’t believe it is 100% organic. During this treasure hunt, I was outraged to even find a product labeled Napa Valley mustard that wasn’t even made in Napa, but in Oregon! And now, sigh, as I re-read the label on my local mustard, I realize it may not have been produced in Berkeley afterall. It states that it is produced for “Berkeley Bowl” and calls itself “Berkeley Dijon”, but there isn’t any more information on the production source.

To make one batch of everything, it cost approximately $120... a bit more than we had anticipated (we had budgeted $75).


THE KITCHEN TEST

The actual “kitchen test” was staged on Friday with Jess, Scooter, Michael, Paul and myself in the kitchen. Over the course of the evening, we prepared three rounds of food to sample.

The first round included the fava bean puree and garlic toasts with the lettuce wraps. We did not have almond butter for the lettuce wrap marinade, so we substituted with the orange dressing intended for the baby vegetables.

The lettuce wraps were delicious, but messy. We were concerned about the feasibility of being able to manage them without utensils at the reception. In the end, we decided they were just too good to not include on the final menu and that hopefully the messiness would simply add to the festivity of the opening event.


The fava bean puree was lovely, really lovely after Scooter, our “tv cooking show trained culinary expert”, came to the rescue. He added a few additional spices – red pepper flakes, tarragon, salt, and a bit more olive oil - (not entirely local, but from our spice rack) to the puree that perfected it.

Preparing the fava beans themselves though was very time consuming. First, we had to shell five pounds of beans. We needed two pounds unshelled for the puree. Next the shelled beans had to be blanched and then the outer skin from each little bean had to be removed. Here is Jess, holding up the paltry amount of beans left after such an extended effort, only weighing in at 1 ½ pounds, a bit short of our goal.


Initially we concluded that this puree just wasn’t practical for the reception, timewise. However, after tasting it, we decided if the beans were prepared a day in advance, then it could be done and was definitely worth the end result.


Round 2 included the avocado and hard cooked eggs with orange dressing (instead of the lemon dressing) and strawberries. We substituted the orange dressing for the lemon because we simply had so much of it! It was very tasty, but as soon as we reached for the first morsel, we were running to the kitchen for knives and forks. It was a nice dish, but far too impractical as reception food.

Scooter suggested tossing the strawberries in a bit of balsamic, a combination that sounded surprising, but worked nicely. It also had the added benefit of being very simple to prepare!

Round 3 included the Greek spinach balls, the asparagus leek frittata, and the steamed asparagus. By round 3 we were flagging, unable to eat any more. We decided to have only a small taste and package the rest as takeout. At this point, though, Michael announced that he had just finished peeling all of the baby carrots. Oops we totally forgot about the baby vegetables and vinaigrette! I thought he might actually try to force feed them to us since it had taken him so long to peel. Hopefully he has forgiven us for finding it all so amusing.


The Greek spinach balls were disappointingly bland. We decided they could be remedied with a few additional spices (suggestions forthcoming from Scooter!) and perhaps a bit of mustard. Also, we thought they would be more manageable and go further if half the size.

You could tell we were running out of steam because we forgot to put the leek into the frittata from the start, and added it later, but it still was quite good, if a bit thin. We concluded
that we should double the ingredients to bulk it up a bit.

Our final menu remained intact with the exception of the avocado and egg dish which did not make the cut due to the “utensil” factor. Otherwise, Paul and Jessica (and any other cooks who volunteer) will make one batch of everything with a double batch of the frittata. The food they prepare will be supplemented with local breads, cheeses and fruit brought by the other participating artists in the exhibition.

It was a fun and enlightening evening and we did manage to achieve our goal, that is, to create, sample, and shape the menu!