Food Demo Part 1: Prep-work

I recently stumbled upon an opportunity to run a full two-hour cooking demonstration as a project for my Hunger and Abundance class at UTSA. The terms were simple: I would be provided a fully equipped demo kitchen, a budget for ingredients, and an audience, and all I had to do in return was cook a few simple dishes. 

I was thrilled! If I could pull the thing off, I would have a great grade and great experience. If this demo went well, it would be a small affirmation of my ability to cook food professionally. A bit of proof that I’m not in over my head with this “foodie” business. Either way, this opportunity to run a cooking demo on my own terms was one that few aspiring chefs are afforded, and I set out with the deepest intentions of not screwing this up. 

I started by conceptualizing my menu. I needed to think of a theme. I don’t know what possessed me, but I decided to build my first cooking demo around vegetarian comfort food. I spent hours thumbing through every cookbook or food magazine that I owned, looking for dishes that adhered to my seemingly oxymoronic theme. 

My goal was to develop a menu of three or four items which could be cooked in about two hours altogether. I figured that a soup would be the perfect dish to begin the demo with, as it could be started and then left to simmer while another dish was started. I settled on a potato cream soup with roasted red peppers from the Culinary Institute of America’s vegetarian cookbook. I’d never prepared the recipe before, but the thought of warm potatoes, peppers, and parmesan. 

I figured that I could make an appetizer last, as it would most likely take the least time, so I decided to leave that decision for last and focus on my entree. I obsessed over that entree for days, scouring every vegetarian cooking book, blog, or website I could find, looking for some vegetarian dish that looked hearty and/or comforting. I was at a disadvantage, it seemed, as I was completely lacking personal experience in the realm of vegetarian cuisine. But after much vigorous reminiscing, I recalled a particularly comforting dish that I would always order when my mother used to take me and my sister to La Madeleine,  a cozy french cafe chain, during the winter. The Spinach Pochette at La Madeleine was one of my favorite meals as a child, my grandmother having instilled in me a serious love for leafy greens at a very young age. The earthy spinach, paired with a savory cheese mixture, and folded into a flaky pastry resonates with me as the epitome of simple french comfort food. I decided to take the best things about this recipe and incorporate them into an entree. I found a recipe for spinach and goat cheese quiche with sun-dried tomatoes. It looked perfect: earthy spinach and tomatoes, savory and creamy goat cheese and parmesan, and a nice, flaky pie crust. 

I figured that for the demo, I could make the crust and filling while the soup finished and let the quiche bake while I made the appetizer, which by this time I’d decided would be elegantly simple zucchini pancakes: little fried zucchini fritters that I’d serve with creamy tzatziki sauce. So my menu was set--assuming I could learn to successfully make all of these dishes in the week-and-a-half I had before the demo. Once I learned the recipes I’d have to figure out how to time the demo, check to make sure that the demo kitchen we were using (at the UTSA rec. center) had all of the supplies we needed, round up any unaccounted for supplies, buy ingredients, and finally, cook the entire meal under the watch of dozens of hungry eyes. Yikes!

Just as I began experiencing the early stages of a nervous breakdown, two other students from the class approached me, asking if I needed help cooking during the demo. Though I had initially envisioned myself running the entire demo, the prospect of having three chefs, each one preparing a different meal, seemed like a great way to alleviate some of the stress I’d been accumulating over the project.  Needless to say, I accepted their help with open arms. 

The first sous-chef to approach me was Randall, a tall, skinny military man with a surprising passion for food. He was a cook at The Cheesecake Factory--which, lets face it, is essentially just Olive Garden for the slightly more affluent--but his cooking skills and knowledge were impressive nevertheless. I’d also noticed that Randall was a rather talkative guy, and I was relieved to have someone else in the kitchen who could fill my awkward pauses. 

My second sous-chef was Shane Jones, a young man whose natural curiosity more than made up for his relative lack of knowledge in the kitchen. Though I had my doubts initially, he learned quickly and would eventually gave a great performance at the demo. 

I held a practice session, for which I had great expectations, at my apartment one week before the demo. I wanted to run it like a rehearsal, practicing the order in which we would perform different steps and keeping time to ensure that we would be orderly and precise on the day of the demo.  I thought that we could practice speaking aloud as we cooked and find a little chemistry between us to keep our audience entertained. I was greatly disappointed.        

I have myself to blame for the failure of our practice session. With two chefs and a mound of ingredients sitting before me, I realized exactly how much more effort I would need to put into this demo to make it run smoothly.  I hadn’t given Randall or Shane copies of the recipes they were preparing, so they both had to learn how to make them. Also, I hadn’t yet developed a concrete plan for how to order the preparation of the three menu items. Furthermore, there were several things that needed to be prepped in advance, and since I hadn’t done that, we had to spend a lot of time on prep work. 

The resulting rehearsal was a lot messier than I’d hoped. We all ended up working on our separate dishes simultaneously, and it was impossible to convince either of my sous-chefs to treat the practice like a real demo. The food came out well, with the exception of my dish. I’d given Randall the task of making the soup and had Shane make the zucchini pancakes. I was going to make the quiche... for the first time. I’d never made my own pie crust before, and it is just as difficult as everyone says. To make a light, flaky pie crust requires finesse, agility, and most importantly, practice. I don’t think I need to tell you that my pie crust came out thick and as hard as stone. I would have to put in a lot of time with the rolling pin before I could make crust worthy of being served. 

Though not what I expected, the practice had taught me some valuable lessons, the most important of which is that if you want to be respected in any kitchen, even your own, you have to be prepared. You have to know exactly what you’re doing and be prepared to delegate, these things are essential.  I knew that I couldn’t let the demo look anything like our practice run, so I had to get control of things quickly.

My first concern was figuring out how I could arrange these three menu items, each of which with very different cooking times, into a cohesive demo without leaving any gaps. I didn’t want us twiddling our thumbs while we waited for the quiche to cook, and I didn’t want to confuse people by constantly jumping around from one recipe to another. I developed and itinerary which explicitly listed the order in which every step of each recipe would be performed. I wanted my sous-chefs to be able to refer to it during the demo and know exactly what they needed to do next. Since the quiche had a rather long baking time, I decided that I would make two quiches the night before and reheat them at the demo. Also, any items that needed to be peeled or chopped in bulk were done ahead of time to eliminate down-time during the demo.

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Food Demo Itinerary:
Prep at home:

• quiche filling (fully prepped) or full quiche to be reheated
• pie dough

Prep in Kitchen:

• potatoes (peeled)
• zuchinni (grated and dried)
• peppers (blanched)

Step One: Start soup/ Knife Demo

1. Randall- Soup  Roast peppers (cut, put in oven)
2. Pillow- Leeks (cut and water bath), start melting butter, peel chop and add garlic.
3. Randall- Steam show peppers, peel and chop pre-blanched peppers
4. Randall-  Add peppers and leeks
5. Randall- Demo peeling and dicing 1 or 2 potatoes, ask for volunteers to dice pre-peeled potatoes
6. Randall- Add potatoes, add vegetable broth, add thyme. Start simmer (Timer: 30 min)

Step Two: Mixing Dough, Rolling Dough, Start Blind Bake

1. Making Dough

1. Pillow- Take pre-mixed dough out of fridge.  Mix dough in processor. Ice water, sift flour and salt, add butter, add water slowly)
2. Pillow- Knead and roll show-dough, put in fridge.

2. Rolling Pre-made Dough

1. Pillow- Roll out dough
2. Pillow- Cut dough. Roll onto pie tin.
3. Pillow- Crimp Edges Preheat Oven 375

3. Blind-baking

1. Pillow- Prick bottoms with fork. Shape foil and add dry beans
2. Pillow- Bake crusts (Timer: 10)

Step Three: Quiche Filling, Finish Soup

1. Quiche Filling (Make double recipe ahead of time)
1. Pillow- Heat oil
2. Pillow- (Onion Dicing demo) Add garlic and onions
3. Pillow- add spinach and saute. season and let drain in colander.
4. Pillow- whisk together cream and eggs.
5. Pillow- Add goat cheese, parmesan, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach.
6. Pillow- Pour into crusts and bake at 350 (Set timer 40 min)

   2.     Finish Soup

1. Randall- Heat cream for soup
2. Randall- Puree soup with immersion blender.
3. Randall- Add heated cream and season
4. Randall- chop chives, grate parmesan for garnish, set aside for later. Keep soup warm.

Step Four: Tzatziki Sauce and Zucchini Pancakes

1. Tzatziki Sauce (Double this Recipe)
1. Pillow- Grate zucchini and squeeze dry.
2. Pillow- add yogurt, sour cream, oil, dill, and cucumber in processor. blend.
3. Pillow- pour sauce into bowl and add lemon zest and juice.

1. Zucchini Pancakes (Double this recipe and make very small cakes)
1. Shane- Grate show zucchini, salt, and set aside to dry.
2. Shane- Whisk eggs in bowl and add flour. Mix.
3. Shane- Chop herbs and crumble feta. Add to egg mixture.
4. Shane- Heat oil in pan.
5. Shane- Add walnuts and pre-grated zucchini.
6. Shane- fry small spoonfuls to make enough cakes for everyone
7. Shane- Salt finished pancakes.

Step 5: Taste and serve.

• Slice quiche and display on platter
• Arrange pancakes neatly around bowl of tzatziki.
• Serve out of dutch oven. Garnish with chives and parmesan.
• Set out disposable cutlery and dishes
• Help serve guests and relax.

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My next big task was to master the pie crust. I tried several different recipes over several days, most often coming up with pie crusts that were either too doughy or too crumbly. Eventually, I came across a recipe that worked, and I stuck to it. The recipe called for 1 1/2 cups of flour, two sticks of butter (one cold and one frozen), cubed, salt, to taste, and just enough ice-cold water to form a cohesive dough. As you can see, this recipe requires a bit of guess-work, and it took me several long nights to get it down. I had to be able to make this recipe without any hitches on the day of the demo, and eventually I mastered the pernicious pastry, though I’ll never look at a pie the same way again. Now I only had to cook the dang thing at the demo, and I'd be done.

Part 2: The Show Coming soon!