Hot Peppers from the Portager!

Beautiful hot peppers from the portager!

These have been hand cut and lovingly placed in the fermenter crock.  

Culinary Skill Workshop Week 2

This week we played with the meat grinder!  The Mission has a great unit without a lot of attachments. I wanted to make sausages instead we made chicken meat balls.

We also made a good dark Cajun Roux. This was added to a sauce made up of the Trinity and some house made chicken stock along with our own blend of Creole Seasoning. 

We ended up making a very tasty Cajun Meat Ball Stew. 

What shall we do next week? 

A new 5 part series.

We started a new five part series!  We will be demonstrating various cooking skills and techniques . 

For the first week, we learned about Gatriques. Basicly a French sweet and sour sauce.   We made a Honey Gastrique and served it over grilled pork 

This is a very easy sauce.

Take one part honey

Two parts Apple vinegar. (We had Honey Vinegar)

Salt to taste 

In a heavy pot, heat the honey until it starts to carmalizes.  Add the vinegar.  Heat until the Gastrique reduced to the thickness of maple surup. 

We went on to make a Red Peper Coulis served over grilled chicken and a Tomato Coulis served over pasta.

I use Coulis and Gastriqes at home and in the Missions Kitchen 

I forgot to take photos of the food!

See you next week? 

Fermenting and Pickling.

We spent the last 4 Tuesday evenings conducting a work shop on how to pickle and ferment fruit and vegetables. 

We explored traditional and safe techniques in preserving food.  We made fermented hot sauces, traditional pickles and  pickled hot peppers.  We made sauckraut, Hatian Picklees and kimchi 

The participants also made mustards and  chutney. 

The mission is a seasonal kitchen.  We get tons of fresh vegetables in season.  The techniques and methods that they guys learned will go into practice to use the generous  donations that we revive. 

Korean Short Ribs

Steve is an experience and very creative cook.  He is a graduate of our program and is a  student at Contra Costa College's  culinary program.  Steve's creativity and experience is a gift to our kitchen. 

Steve's Boss "Chef" Chris grilled a bunch the night before. What a waste of a fine donation. You can't grill these things. The guys where served Grilled shoe leather. 

A very generous butcher gave us pallets of beef short ribs.  Steve prepared a Korean Beef BBQ for today's lunch. I am a fan of Korean cooking, Steve did not disappoint me!

The Pig Roast

Yesterday was the New Life Golf Tournament hosted by the Bay Area Rescue Mission. The Mission's Culinary crew catered the event's banquet and did a great job spit-roasting their 60 pound pig!

The BBQ Menu included Tri Tip and Pork Butt, which were served with three house made BBQ sauces.  But the jewel of the buffet was the spit roasted pig!

The spit was set up in front of one of Rossmoor's clubhouses.  All day long, a parade of cars and walkers stopped to ask our cooks about the pig. The number one question was if they could hire us for their next event! In case you are wondering, we have an excellent and creative catering service that can assist you with any size and style of event.

A spit Roasted Pig!

On May 11th the Culinary Gang will be catering the banquet for the New Life Golf Tournament in Walnut Creek.  The Jewel of the feast will be a whole roasted.

Chris the kitchen's cook sought the advice from Culinary Graduate Joe Q on the finer points of Open Spit roasting. Unfortunately Chris did not take the advice of Joe.  He decided to smoke the pig before he cooked it!  What a waste of donated dollars!  That pig disappeared and Chris needed to find a pig on a Sunday!

A Talented Intern

Joey graduated from the program a few months ago.  He is currently enrolled in the Culinary Program at Contra Costa College.  

A Vocational Volunteer in the Mission's Kitchen, Joey oversees the staff in preparing one of the daily meals. 

I enjoyed working with Joey.  He has a passion that will get him places in his new profession!

Joey has been offered a paid internship for the summer in an East Bay resturant. 

Bees in the Potager!

A local bee keeper is placing three hives in the kitchen garden!

We are replanning the garden.  Tearing out the lawn and building elevated wick planters.  

About six weeks behind schedule, we just got the hives planted today. 

An Algerian Feast!

I do not get to cook as often as I like so when I do, I want it to be special for our dinners and educational for our students. 

I cook a lot of Creole food, will I do describe myself as a Creole Cook, so that is to be expected. I enjoy cooking French Food and dishes from former French Colonies. 

This Wedsday we cooked three Algerian Recipies:

Chicken Kofta

     ground Chicken with Preserved           Lemons, salted herbs and Algerian Spices. 

Hmissa Bol Dersa 

     chick peas stewed in a red pepper sauce 

Saffron Couscous

     Cooked with house made Chicken Stock. Chopped dates. Cured Lemon and saffron.

House Made Flat Bread

I wrote out detailed instructions for the students and gave a little talk on Algerian Food. I gave a brief demo. 

Three teams took on the recipes and made a remarkable meal!

Now the next step was introducing Algerian Cuisine to our diners. 

They loved the dinner!

Our Bible Teacher brings herYouth Group!

Sabrina, our dedicated Bible Teacher brought her Youth Group from The Creek Convenant Church, Pleasnt Hill.  

This enthusiastic group spent the day helping the BARM staff prep for Easter Brunch.