The composition of lunch
So when we last left the food post, I’d thrown three pictures at you and not told you what they were. I did leave a promise to revisit that, however, so here we are.
The one on top is hot shrimp and crab dip, served with toasted french bread. It’s shrimp, crab, cream, and monterey jack cheese, various herbs and spices, heated through to combine flavours and melt the cheese, and then rouxed to thick-city. I don’t personally care much for shrimp and crab, but I’m told by everyone else that it was fantastic. This was especially nice since it was the dish I had the least idea about, and wasn’t 100% sure it would come out edible, much less good. Yet it did!
In the middle is what we billed as the "New Year’s Good Luck Dinner." It’s blackened grilled pork loin chops, steamed greens with garlic and olive oil, and a spicy snai^H^H^H^H black-eyed pea concoction with peppers and onions and such. Oh, and cornbread. This is the Good Luck Dinner because, as I understand it, the especially superstitious and/or mystical folk tend to assume that kale and black-eyed peas represent like wealth and happiness and shit like that. I don’t really get it. All I know is the pork chops represent me thinking pork chops would be good with this dish, and the cornbread represents me looking at the plate and thinking it needed something yellow.
On the bottom is the Portobello Manicotti that I made (minus the salad it comes with). It’s fairly straightforward: manicotti stuffed with portobello mushrooms, ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, eggs, herbs and spices, topped with a simple tomato sauce and more mozzarella. Comes with garlic bread and a salad. I think it’s a terriffic dish, and the consensus was that adding the mushrooms to the filling really rounded out the flavour nicely, since typical manicotti formaggio is a bit on the bland side. On the other hand, next time I do a filled pasta it will probably be stuffed shells; I’d forgotten what a colossal pain in the balls manicotti is to work with.
An hour before we opened, my kitchen was a giant disaster; there was half-finished this and that all over the place, empty containers of whatever and dirty pans scattered all around the room. I’m honestly surprised we were able to pull the kitchen back into usable shape by the beginning of service, much less finish the menu and get such a fond reception for it. But, hey, my first real test as acting chef was a success!
