IT'S BEEN A WHILE

Hi all! It's been a while and a long, busy summer. It seems like just yesterday I was looking forward to the coming months and trying figure out how I was going to make it through all of the events that were to come. Now here we are looking ahead towards fall which is one of my favorite times of the year. The months of September through December just may be my favorites and my favorite times to get into some serious cooking. I tend to cook at home a lot more in the fall (at least try to I should say). Everything trends towards heartier foods and slower cooking methods (my favorites) too. Also though grilling in the fall in my opinion is much more fun than in the summer. Not only because the heat from the grill acts a great way to keep warm but also much of the produce that comes in season this time of year is well complimented by the grilling process. Well I know that I have been saying that I will be posting recipes and I have definately been procrastinating, SO WITHOUT ANY MORE DELAY here are a couple of my favorites.

Look out soon for pictures from my amazing trip back to Boston and some more recipes (I promise). Have a great night and I will talk to you all very soon!

The Things I do for cooking

Well it is late Wednesday night I guess (more like Thursday morning) and I felt compelled to write seeing as I apparently do not sleep. This week has been a tough one on me so far and I'm only half way into it. Throughout this first half of the week I have been working a 5am- 1pm shift, or so I had thought. So far the first three days have turned into 5am-6pm shifts. Long shifts like these are amazing for my paycheck and normally I can handle the toll it takes on my body, but this week has been a true testament of how much I can handle. Sunday morning I was moving a full speed cart (6 ft rolling cart) from the cooler. This is something I do 20-30 times a day so its very common, so as I was moving it I turned the wrong way and kind of got caught up in it and twisted my ankle (again so I thought). I went about my day hobbling along and by the end of the day I was in twice as much pain and very annoyed. This went on for three days and each day the pain got worse and worse. Finally yesterday afternoon after much prodding from Ashley I went to get it checked out. It turns out that I have a torn ligament in my left foot and toe and you know what the doctors do for that? Not a god damn thing! I was told I am supposed to stay off of it for at least 48 hours, well that's not gonna happen I have two plated functions and a reception of 1500+ coming up in the next two days. Guess I have to keep dealing with it.

Anyways I have an awesome event to talk about, some new pictures and a recipe to share. This coming Sunday I am volunteering for an event called Chefs Up Front. This is a benefit to help to raise the critical funds needed to empower low-income families with the skills, knowledge and confidence to prepare healthy and affordable meals. There are 30 local restaurants that are volunteering. What happens is people have the opportunity to purchase a seat at the table of the chef of their choice. There are only ten seats per table so it makes for a very intimate experience with the chef. I am very excited to be a part of this because we have done this as a collaboration and I have had the chance to give my input and help create parts of the menu. I will be posting the menu when we finalize it and type it out (maybe in the next day or so). If you are interested in learning more about this cause I highly recommend checking out their website, it is http://cookingmatters.org/cooking-matters-colorado. 


Here are some photos of plates I did last week. They were sort of a joke but were actually really great tasting. I call this my high end concessions line. Enjoy!

Pretzel crusted bratwurst served over a red bliss potato cake with a sweet and sour cabbage gazpacho and pommery mustard whipped cream

Seared hot dog on a toasted bun with a sauerkraut relish, chipotle caramelized onions and yellow mustard gastrique.

Alright well that is it for me tonight I promise I will have a recipe for a fragrent basil oil, chicken marinade and charred red pepper coulis later on today. Also I will give some ideas how you could incorporate all of these together for an incredible dinner. Right now though I am exhausted and just accidentally deleted all three of these recipes as well as this blog (twice). 


Good night!!!!

Some Pictures of my food!

Well today was my last of a 10 day stretch of work and I finally have 2 days off coming to me. In that time I am hoping to finally fire up my grill and test out some new ideas I have been toying with. I have also been glued to this cookbook COCO for the past week or so and it has been the source of many of my ideas I want to experiment with. COCO is much more of a professionally driven book. Basically it is 10 world renowned chefs that pick 10 of their favorite up and coming chefs from all over the world. Most of the content is focused towards the professional kitchens but some of the plates and photography are stunning.


Anyways, I wanted to share a couple of plates that I have done in the past couple of months. The first one is the most recent. I did this a couple of weeks ago as a vegan option for one of our dinners. This is a Zucchini box that is stuffed with sauteed leeks, zucchini, tomatoes, garlic and thyme. The sauces are a charred red pepper coulis, balsamic reduction and basil oil. This is a picture of it to the right. I served the actual plate with a potato risotto during dinner but at the time of taking this I hadn't quite figured out the final product.


The second plate is one that I did late last fall for three different events I think. It is a Roasted Buffalo Tenderloin with braised micro carrots, brussel sprouts and pearl onions. It was served on top of a parsnip puree and the sauces were a simple demi glace and red wine reduction. I was just starting to play around with molecular gastronomy at the time too and did some espresso caviar and mushroom foam as garnish. This is the picture to the left (it's kind of blurry, sorry).


Well that's it for me now. Soon I will have some recipes to post on here I just have to start putting them on to my computer. That has been a goal of mine for a while now so maybe having this blog will help me get my ass in gear and do it. 


Talk to you all soon!

Hi Welcome to my Blog

Welcome! I am not entirely sure what tonight's blog is going to be all about seeing as this is my first attempt at blogging. I have decided to do this for two main reasons. One: I love food, cooking and everything that goes along with it. I am a cook and I could not dream of a better profession. I live and breathe cooking and food. Secondly: I live a great distance away from most of my family and given how demanding this profession can be it's hard to really keep in touch with many of them other than calling and saying hi a couple times a week. My main reason is to hopefully share some great restaurants, interesting foods, recipes, cookbooks that I am into (I am a junkie so there may be a lot of these) and to let people into what I do and what I love. I am sure that I will get better at this as the time goes on but for now I will just keep it simple. So for tonight it's back to COCO for me and hopefully some new ideas that I may share with all of you (and maybe some sleep but we'll see). Good Night for now!