So it happened that the third Saturday of March is St. Patrick’s Day. Since my Saturday to volunteer chef services at Grand Junction’s Grand Valley Catholic Outreach Soup Kitchen is always the third Saturday, I will be doing St. Paddy’s day.

A surprise when I get into the kitchen at the normal 7 AM to start my prep. for the day’s noon meal. Usually they hold all the strange stuff for me. They know whatever is in the walkin reefer I will turn into a meal. But today will be different as a retired Irish Priest has donated corn beef and the cabbage for the meal.

So for the first time at the soup kitchen I will be working with food that was not served first somewhere else! This is great! It being spring break here I have no idea if my normal crew of high school students will be showing up. So I hammer into the meal prep full speed expecting a lot of them not to show up.

First I fire up the hoods, ovens, and the tilt skillet! Then start to pull the corn beef from the packages. They are all point cuts. Immediately I realize that I will have to carve in advance for the service line. In the ten years I have been with Zane, I have cut a lot of beef brisket. Cut correctly it is a wonderful delight, watch someone cut it wrong and serve it, and it is an absolute nightmare to chew. So how will I prep? Salt, black pepper, bay, thyme, mustard, and four types of whole peppercorns, including white, yellow, pink and some type of gray one I don’t really recognize.

Searing the meat first is a must as I will be roasting the meat seperately so I can finish it and slice it whilst the cabbage and taters are “doing their thing” in the tilt skillet.

This is a fairly large piece of equipment, so I will be doing case and a half at a time till I get through the 120 pounds of beef. I know I have mentioned it in the past, but this is one handy piece of equipment.

After I sear the meat I have elected to pan in 4 inch hotels for the final roasting to temp in our convection oven. Now 8 am and only one volunteer has arrived. Going to be a tight one today if I don’t have my normal crew. But I am only expecting 188 people based on the last two days service counts. So not really a problem if I can just get two others to show up. In the hotel pans I have placed all the beef for maximum exposure to the heat. Minimizing overlap will help everything cook at the same rate of temperature gain.

After searing is complete I am going to deglaze the tilt skillet and bring up an aujus to baste the brisket in for the roasting.

A little water and a balancing of the salt level pulls together a decent glaze for the brisket in its roasting phase.

Flip the switch and bring the tilt in the air, catch the magic solution with a large handled sauce pot and we are ready to baste for the oven.

After I get the baste evenly across all five pans they are into the convection at 350 F till I see 144 F. Then pull for carry over.

Then just as I was about to make a couple phone calls to pull in some favors for volunteers a husband and wife show up looking to help. Ah 4 of us now, 188 and three hours to service, piece of cake.

Chef thought:

I get asked a lot what makes a chef a chef and a cook a cook and how do you tell them apart. While the title Chef can be claimed by anyone that cooks in the USA, I seperate the two at the level of total kitchen management. A Chef, can look at a situation, survey the equipment, survey the meal, and decide in their head on the fly what needs to be done, how to get it done, with what equipment, and in what order to ensure that equipment is fully utilized, all while applying the labor available, to the tasks that require completion, in the proper order and places to accomplish the complete mission.

Get to an Executive Sous, Chef de Cuisine or Executive Chef and they can perform all the above plus also solve problems, understand the costs, develop the menus with profit margin in mind. Generally, to me, all the management titled level chefs have a handle on costs in the kitchen, plus the above skills. They are mindful of the kitchens equipment and know when it is not acting correctly.

Professional cooks can be relied on to accomplish the production of the specified menu with minimum supervision. But generally concentrate on their specific cooking tasks. If you want to work on the Chef skills volunteer at a soup kitchen, you get to look at the big picture, do the menus, arrange all of the above and then some. Tons and Tons of fun! At least for me.

The best position? To me it has to be Chef de Cuisine, all the fun, all the management, all the menu and food stuff, without the nasty paperwork, ordering, billing, etc. Chef de Cuisine is about the kitchen producing professional food and that is the focus you bring to bore on the days production. At least in the catering kitchen!

Chef thoughts closed!

As the chef, when volunteers start showing up I have things for them to do, it is all in my head and I am constantly filling in info, where are you with that?, etc etc. Now in a soup kitchen you don’t get a lot of culinary trained people. So other chefs are rare, professional cooks even rarer, you do however get some great home cooks, while not at the level of a professional cook, they can, with a little guidance put out some amazing things. This couple loves to build and eat salads at home, and so it would be that they achieve for the day the title “cooks ensalada!” After a lot of years of cheffing and managing you get used to doing your tasks and watching over everything else that needs to come together. Correcting, teaching and/or helping when necessary.

While I turn them to the salads, I hammer out the cabbage. I had my first volunteer quartering potatoes while I seared the meat. This is all going to come together so cool! And yes, you really feel that in your mind, at one point you know everything is on schedule and moving and you realize, “this is so cool!” Or not, maybe for everyone, but I love what I do and I love doing it so to me I still get the elation from realizing, yep hammering this thing out of the park again!

After this potato layer another cabbage layer on top, and all the left over marinade is then poured over the cabbage. Tilt skillet to 375 F and lid shut. Let steam do its wonderful magic.

Meanwhile back to the beef. Pull the pans, flip the brisket.

A little further maillard reaction for the other side of the meat. The searing does most of it, but the roasting adds to it as well.

Definition:

The complex reaction between reducing sugars and the amine groups of amino acids along with proteins is called the Maillard reaction. This is named after the French chemist who discovered it in about 1912. It is recognized as an important factor in determining the color, aroma, as well as the nutritional value of many foods. The reaction causes the condensation of a reducing group of “a carbohydrate and an amino group” from a protein or amino acid results ultimately in a compound of low solubility. The double bonds of the products of this reaction(really an intense series of reactions) account for their brown or yellowish color. Hey now ya know why steak is brown when seared!

When I first go into the place I noticed no cakes or desserts were in the donor pantry. So I had to come up with a dessert. What kind of green dessert? Looking around I found some pistachio pudding. My wife has this pistachio cake she makes that I love, I call it “the green cake” and it is just the thing for St. Paddy’s day. So while the beef was roasting I had the early volunteer prep some cake, telling him the instructions while chopping cabbbage. Then had my second volunteers make a nice green powder sugar and crisco icing for it. (hey you don’t do butter cream at a soup kitchen, ain’t in the budget!)

You can see the plated cakes on the line. This is my line for the day.

Just as I was figuring on some longer clean up, the two main dishwasher volunteers show up and start to clean everything in sight! I was very happy to see the dish washers show up. Takes a while to do that end of it, so they could work on the pots and pans, while I cleaned my cooking equipment. Tilt skillets are fairly easy to clean, but I like the thing polished!

My first guest would be non other than our benefactor for the day. I very nice retired priest who wished not to be named, but was happy to come taste what we created and watch everyone enjoy the meal!

Thank you Father for the donation, it was great to cook for these people again. And even better that they too could celebrate a little bit of the Irish, maybe the year will bring them the luck of the Irish as well and they will find themselves in a better place as the year progresses.

‘Til we talk again, find some time to volunteer, the rewards are excellent. If your a professional chef or cook, you will find your skills highly valued and you can have the time of your life teaching people to make good food. Hey they’re volunteers, they want to be with you!

Chef Bob Ballantyne
The Cowboy and The Rose Catering
Grand Junction, Colorado, USA