from last year, shows the space in the kitchen
Cinco de Mayo has come and gone, I’ve survived and more importantly Jonathan’s kitchen survived. Unfortunately the way the evening went I didn’t get any photos but, I hope to give you an idea of the day of prep and the dinner service. This is a glimpse of how much fun we had and the difficulties that arise when you take a perfectly functioning restaurant and toss its menu out the window for a single evening.
The menu that we decided to do was relatively ambitious, so prep had already begun in spare moments the previous few days. But, the big push started at 10ish Wednesday morning. Nick, Jonathan’s sous chef, and Jonathan had divided the prep work up on the side of the big stainless steel fridge. I looked over the tasks assigned to me and did a quick mental calculation to see if there was a chance of actually finishing this prep in the same day that we started. My mental scheduling showed that we would finish just in time to celebrate Ocho de Mayo, not a significant event in Mexican history. So we jumped in and started working like madmen.
My list included; chilaquiles soup base, ancho rice, poblano rice, build ancho rellenos, figure out and create plantain turnovers, wrap the fish in banana leaves (Jonathan ultimately did that), build masa tartlets, and prep the cesar salad. Nick was working on the coconut pie, sopapillas, sweet biscuits, slaw, fried tortillas and shredded potatoes, and various other garnishes. Jonathan had already prepped the duck, mole, roasted the squash and cauliflower, made ricotta cheese, pot roast, the different beans and lentils, and some of the sauces and desserts. So his list comprised the chicken, chorizo stuffing, the corn torta, the cerviche, more garnishes and generally making sure that I don’t mess up his kitchen too much.
Good soup can and usually should take some time, so I started that first. Tomatillos are part of the gooseberry family and once you peel the dry husk off they have a slightly sticky skin. I feel the best flavor comes after they have been roasted. A quick rinse and a light coating in olive oil and they went under the broiler. While those were roasting I starting peeling and seeding the poblano peppers that Jonathan had roasted earlier in the morning. In a stock pot I put chopped onion, olive oil, and the roughly chopped poblano peppers. I let those saute for a few minutes. After the onions showed some color I added the roasted tomatillos. I let those cook down for about 20 minutes and then added chicken stock. That ultimately cooked for about 2 hours. I added some fresh epizote at the 1 hour mark and let that add its funky flavor to the party.
While I was playing with the early stages of my soup I was watching poor Nick with the coconuts that were to be used for the coconut pie. Opening a well packaged coconut can be somewhat challenging. Eventually using the back-side of a cleaver Jonathan and Nick cracked the coconuts and drained the milk. The surprise was how little meat was in each nut. We were hoping to get at least a cup of shredded coconut from each one and in reality we almost got a cup of coconut from all 4. I suppose the coconut season in Maine isn’t around the first week of May. This resulted in a chef on a motorcycle wearing an apron running to the local store to find shredded, unsweetened coconut. These are the things you later sort of laugh about, but at the time represent a serious setback to the already full schedule.
Jonathan was busy building more sauces and working on the chorizo and potato stuffing for the chicken. I was in the midst of learning about making rellenos from ancho chilies. Usually you roast poblano peppers and remove the skin. Cut a slit in the side and remove the seeds. Then stuff the pepper with whatever stuffing you wish. Bread the pepper and fry it. Not very difficult until you play with dried chilies and then a whole new world of fun opens up. I hydrated the anchos in water heated to boiling. After soaking for about 15- 20 minutes they were pliable enough to determine their flaws. After sorting through the chilies to determine which were intact and good for relleno production I began the delicate work of opening the sides and removing the seeds. I stuffed these with a mixture of chihuahua cheese and diced red bell peppers. Chihuahua cheese is very much like mozzarella. These then went into the fridge to set up a bit and hopefully become a little less delicate.
Next in my list of stuff was making tartlet shells from masa. These turned out to be pretty simple. Mix masa harina with water to get a nice consistency for building little shells. I started rolling a ball of dough nearly 2 inches in diameter. I then used my fingers to make dimple in one side and then began enlarging the that dimple to build a nice shell about 2 1/2 inches across with sides about 1/4 inch thick. Once these were made, Nick fried them in the deep fryer. These turned out to be quite robust and didn’t break or crack while frying.
Since I was hydrating the anchos I continued with hydrating the a different chili for a garnish. I was using my prized chihuacle negro chilies. These are the most expensive and most difficult to get outside of Oaxaca chilies in Mexico. Happily my dear friends in Milan, New Hampshire, have been growing them for me. I personally dried these in september and found that hydrating them was quite difficult. I got them flexible enough to cut into very thin strips. A quick toss in a saute pan with hot oil and they were crispy. It seems silly since they started out dried, but they weren’t in a nice thin garnish shape, thus the extra work. I test drove a thin strip and was so surprised at the instant heat that exploded on my tongue. What followed was a nice dried fruit and coffee flavor. I convinced Nick into trying a piece and watched the poor guy run for his water in the fridge. Jonathan got a quiet piece of chili and he decided that we were just weak. I stick with the idea that these are actually fairly hot and really flavorful.
Next up on my list was making the poblano and ancho rice. While was I making the soup base I had a small pot cooking poblanos, garlic, and onions. that was cooked for a while with a bit of stock and then strained. That left me a nice thick green paste. I’ve always started my Mexican rice like risotto, by first cooking some garlic and onions and then adding the rice and letting it get covered in hot oil and heated through before adding stock and in this case my poblano paste. I was doing 2 different rice dishes so the other once was with an ancho paste that I had made Sunday previously. Once the stock was added in each pot with rice I also added the different chili paste. I hate to admit this, but the ancho rice didn’t come out very good. It was super goopy and not at all fluffy. Jonathan took a look and asked me to try again. It’s always a blow to the ego when you’re in the kitchen of a chef and totally kill a preparation. Although out of 3 years of this collaboration that was the biggest of my food screw ups. Happily enough I had enough ancho paste to make another batch of rice. It came out better and I could focus on the next items on my never shortening list of prep.
While I was getting beaten about the head by my rice, Nick was disassembling some nice ripe plantains. He needed some plantain chips and I needed the bits he didn’t use. Those unused bits were tossed in a little oil and put in the oven to roast for about an hour. Plantains are very starchy and must be cooked before you eat them. The cooking breaks down the complex starches into sugars and less complex starches that the body can cope with. Even as ripe as these were, they are still quite savory, not at all like the standard banana that they resemble. My goal was a turnover made with the roasted plantains. So basically, mash the roasted plantains and mix with flour until you get a manageable dough. Seems easy on paper, but the reality is that the dough was really odd to make. I suppose it ultimately turned out like gnocci dough in a kinda elastic way. I made flat rounds out of the dough and then prepped the filling. Jonathan made some great fresh ricotta cheese and I added some orange zest and a bit of sugar to it for my filling. Each plantain round received a couple teaspoons of filling and I wrapped the dough around that filling. Ultimately they came out quite nice and were ready for Nick to fry as needed for dessert. They did take so long to make that Jonathan had a break in his prep to portion the fish and wrap it in banana leaves.
At this point a glance at the clock showed us that we were now in the final 45 minutes before service. Nick was finishing garnish stuff and frying flour tortillas. Jonathan had somehow in the preceding hours managed to bone chicken thighs and stuff them with the chorizo and potato stuffing and then roast them. So meat was coming out of the oven and Jonathan was going over the menu and the prepped food. I still needed to get the cesar salad started and ready for Nick on his station. There is no doubt that the original cesar salad came from Tiajuana Mexico. What is in doubt is the proportion and actual ingredients used in that original salad. What Jonathan found was that cheese was likely not used and that possibly not even anchovies for that first salad. I decided to use anchovies for my dressing. So into a blender went toasted garlic, anchovies, a bit of salt. Once a nice paste was formed I smeared that on some fresh baguettes. I toasted the bread. While the bread toasted and dried I boiled some water and put some eggs into that water, left them for about 30-40 seconds. This was to sanitize the shell and ensure that there would be no bacterial contamination of my dressing. The eggs, a couple pieces of the bread, lemon juice, mustard powder, and a little water went back into the blender. When everything was pureed I had a very nice cesar dressing. This was ultimately tossed with chopped romaine hearts and served with some of the remaining toasted bread.
While finishing the dressing, Jonathan headed out to explain to the staff what exactly was on this year’s menu. With the dressing done, it was time to bread the ancho rellenos. Our remaining kitchen team member had arrived to clean up some of our mess and we enlisted her with the rellenos. An egg wash and a quick roll in masa and the rellenos were ready. Nick finished getting his appetizer and dessert station ready for service and I finished off the stuff that Jonathan wanted set up for his station. Keep in mind that we were now about 10 minutes from the first reservations and we had yet to figure out how my annoying presence in the kitchen was going to work out for actual service. As I only live about 1/4 mile from the Oxford house I went back to my own inn to feed the cats and get my chef’s jacket and get back to the Oxford house.
I got back to the kitchen just as Jonathan finished the menu brief with the front of house staff. We went over the mise en place (means, everything has its place… used to get a station in a kitchen ready to cook and serve what ever is ordered without prep or finding delays). Now we began to go through the motions of a couple of the entrees to see how we could best work the flow of the kitchen. For those that have been to the Admiral Peary House, my kitchen has more physical room than the Oxford House kitchen. So cramming 3 chefs, the dishwasher, and the constant flow of wait staff through the kitchen becomes an interesting exercise in efficiency. So it worked out like this, Jonathan stayed at the far end of the kitchen within easy reach of 4 of the 6 burners of the stove and within reach of the broiler and ovens. I was next with the final 2 burners of the stove and the grill (mainly used to keep certain things warm). Then came Nick who did the appetizers and desserts. He also share time with me and the deep fryer. We would plate and get prepped ingredients from the sandwich prep counter that is the other side of the station. We have about 2 feet to move in and hopefully avoid each other’s airspace.
The kitchen is as set as it will be and we wait for the first orders. Now is the time we start looking for a copy of the menu to make sure the ordered plates had everything we said they would. Normally this isn’t an issue in a kitchen unless the menu is really new and of course as this is a one night event, the learning curve is steep. As the individual items finish being cooked we gather to decide how to plate the dishes. Ideas get tossed around and then we hope we remember what the final decision was. My ADHD and novelty of a different kitchen caused some of my plates to vary a bit, Jonathan joked that he hoped the first 2 chicken dishes weren’t sitting too close to each other so they could compare the differences. Pretty soon it starts to fall into place. We’ve got half a dozen tickets on the board, Nick is turning out appetizers and I’m making sure the odds and ends that make some of those are ready when he is. Soon I get my first dish, the soup, I’m the only one familiar with what it was supposed to be so I get to do the assembly and garnish decisions. So the first entrees get the call to be fired. This is when the waitstaff who are monitoring their tables want us to begin getting the entrees ready. This timing is purely based upon the table and the waiter/ waitress. For this evening the time from firing to plated dishes was about 10-15 minutes. The idea is of course the freshest cooked food possible. Now the kitchen is moving, Nick is working on the first desserts while still loaded up with appetizer orders. I’m now settling in to plating the chicken and fish dishes while making sure Nick has what he needs and keeping some of the side dishes ready for both Jonathan and myself.
We reached a slight lull, all the ordered appetizers and fired entrees were out to the diners I could take a moment and see some of our friends that always come out for this event. Much to my surprise, Hilary, was back from her business trip and was with our neighbors. She had enough time to let me know that she fed the cats, I guess they won’t be hungry for a bit with 2 dinners in less than 2 hours. Funny enough the cats didn’t mention the previous dinner to her when she got home. With that I went back to the kitchen for the remaining service. The 3 hours of service flew by and soon it was time to heat up all the remaining food and make sure that the hard working staff also got to enjoy Cinco de Mayo.
So another Cinco in the books and I could relax with a beer and wonder why we’re so silly to do this year after year. Pretty soon though I’ll get some inspiration and make a note that I want to try something else for the next Cinco with Jonathan.
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