Do You? I Do. Me Too!

As promised, ♫ here comes the blog ♪! So my mom calls me up last April or so and says, "Hey, I'm coordinating a wedding this August for 150 people. Do you want to cater it?" "Yes." After some ridiculous back and forth, they eventually decide on a taco bar. Nice. Let's do this.

Several months of emails and spreadsheets and cost comparisons and we decide on a menu:

Hickory Smoked Pork Tacos
pineapple mango pico

Chicken Fajita Tacos
jalapeño créma

Salsa Verde
tomatillo, habañero, lime

Salsa Roja
tomato, cilantro, jalapeño

Queso Blanco

Seasonal Fruit
honey vanilla yogurt dip

Fresh Vegetables
ranch veggie dip

Cheese and Crackers

Watermelon Palette Starters
with vanilla simple syrup & frozen melon

Yea, it was a pretty simple, but a pretty good amount of work. Let's just work through this dish by dish shall we?














I bought 60 pounds of pork butts. Mmmhmmm. I fired up the grill and smoked them suckers with hickory for 8 hours. Originally I wanted to pull the pork, but that proved to be a little more time consuming than I thought (and what was supposed to be a 20 minute ceremony ended up being 8), so I ended up just choppin' it up. It was real tasty.














The pork was served with a pineapple mango pico. Fresh pineapple, mango, red bells, red onion, jalapeño, cilantro, lime juice and salt. Done. People could not get enough of this stuff and were begging for the recipe.














I cheated on the chicken. I used pre-marinated fajita meat. Please save your hate for vegetarians. If it makes you feel better, I did use thighs instead of breasts. It's almost impossible to dry that stuff out; not to mention it's got about 1000x more flavor than the breasts. I also added onions and bell peppers that I had seasoned with cumin and worcestershire. I served these tacos with a créma flavored with jalapeño, lime, and avocado.

The salsa verde was roasted tomatillos, onion, lime, cilantro, roasted garlic, jalapeño, and habañero - my first time using habañeros and most certainly not my last.

The salsa roja was rotel, jalapeño, cilantro, garlic, cumin, lime juice, s&p. This is my go-to. Always a winner.

As stated in a previous blog, I experimented with a béchamel-based queso and failed miserably. I did some soul-searching and spoke with one of my chef instructors. The answer? Velveeta. Yup. Processed cheese food. It's almost impossible to mess it up.

The fruit, veggies, and cheese need no description.

As the guests walked from the ceremony to the food tents, they were met by our staff with trays of "watermelon palette starters". I puréed watermelon with vanilla simple syrup, strained it, and chilled it. Then I took cantaloupe, honeydew, and Israeli cantaloupe, balled em, rolled em in the vanilla simple, and froze em. Place the balls in the cup, cover them with refreshing watermelon purée, and watch peoples eyes roll into the back of their heads. Another smash hit.

Overall, it was a great success. It was a little stressful trying to get all the food on the table in 2 minutes, but we got it and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. The parents were super-grateful and signed the check, so that's all that really matters right?

I'm doing a stage at Mulberry again tomorrow, so that should provide some nice material. I also hope to do some cooking this week. Tonight I made stir-fry that was super killer, but I'll save that for later. And stay tuned, because I start CA102 next week - proteins and fabrication and fully-composed plates, OH MY!!!!