As I believe I’ve mentioned before, we do a three course tasting menu at work each week. Its almost entirely up to us(the kitchen staff) what we want to do for it. The only restrictions are on cost, which basically just means we won’t be ordering in any exotic and expensive ingredients- we’re not necessarily trying to make a lot of money off of this, but we certainly can’t be losing money.
This past week we did something quite astray from the norm, and went with a decidedly Latin flair. We kept things fairly accessible for our members by using sea scallops for the appetizer, and pork loin for the entree. We served those sea scallops grilled with a black bean sauce, garbonzo bean cakes, and a slice of breaded and fried avocado. For the garbanzo bean cakes, instead of cooking the beans and pureeing them, I simply soaked them for 2 days to soften them. After that, I used a food processor to chop them up very fine, and folded in a cilantro puree(lime/orange juice, garlic, cilantro, olive oil) to give them a nice green color and of course some of that good flavor. I made the black bean sauce a little bit differently as well. The usual thing would probably be to cook black beans, add some spices and some vinegar and puree it. That’d result in a very tasty end product, but it’d also be a bit chunky and thick, which isn’t really what I’d wanted. What I chose to do was cook some black beans in chicken stock(I used an excess of stock), and reserve the leftover liquid once the beans were cooked. I then just thickened that black bean flavored liquid with corn starch and had my sauce.
The pork dish I kinda lucked into, to be honest. I was upstairs after service last Saturday night looking through the coolers to see what I’d have to work with and was discussing what I was doing with one of the guys that works the formal dining line upstairs(I say that, but formal dining is usually never open- they never get reservations so they almost always get closed down). I had the 1st course pretty well ironed out at that point, but wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the entree, but told him I’d wanted to keep the direction(nationality of the food) the same. As it just so happened, he’d had a Mole sauce prepared for their menu that weekend(which didn’t get used becasue they ended up not being open at all), so he offered it to me since he had no use for it at that point. Was a good deal since Mole requires some 30 or so ingredients and isn’t a short endeavor. Once I had that, I decided to have smoked pork loin, mashed sweet plantains(fried to order and simply mashed with a fork) and roasted peppers, plus some salsa verde(tomatilos, shallots, garlic, lime juice, cilantro- all just pulsed in a food processor).
The dishes came together pretty well- I was quite pleased with both. I actually work with a couple people in the front of the house that are from Mexico. One is a server, and the other an assistant manager(also my roommate), and I’d told both of them that I had something for them with the three course for the week. They were both pretty excited with what we did, and also had very good things to say about what they tasted- which is about meaningful of a compliment as any I’ve received.
This week, we’re going ethnic again, but from a completely different part of the world. It was getting to be the end of the week and one of the guys I work with stated that he wanted to do something for this coming week’s tasting that he’d never done before- as in a nationality he’d never worked with. I suggested he look into Moroccan food, as I actually didn’t know much about it myself. So, he went home and did a little reading, and arrived at a braised lamb dish for the entree with spicy couscous(peppers, garlic, onions, currants), sweet and spicy carrots(cumin, honey) and a vegetable stew for the sauce(carrots, celery, parsnips, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and the braising liquid from the lamb). He couldn’t come up with much for the appetizer, but what he did find involved something like falafel. So, I took that and decided we’ll make our own falafel with fried pita, a spicy tomato relish and a yogurt sauce. Admittedly, that dish is more broadly Mediterranean and likely closer to Greek than Moroccan but I think it’ll work.
I’m curious to see how the Moroccan menu sells. Our Latin offering this past week actually did surprisingly well, particularly over the weekend when business picked up. This week, being the first week of the month, might not give us that opportunity but we’ll see.
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