A New Hallmark Greeting?

A couple days ago, in the final hours of prepping for the huge black-tie affair Bullwinkle Ranch hosted on Saturday, I was scrambling to finish six different things and Chef was helping Keanu strain 80 quarts of venison stock. He looked up and said: "[Pirate], I would totally be in the shit without you."

Uhm, ok. I can see the greeting card... cover: pastel soft-focus flowers with gold script, "Just a Note to Say" and inside, in same font, "I would totally be in the shit without you." I can't believe Hallmark hasn't thought of that yet.

Anyway, I'm not one to need constant reassurance, but it felt really good to get some acknowledgement of how hard I worked on the dessert buffet... nine different kinds of desserts for 400 people. Plus I made 24 pounds of puff pastry (by hand, no sheeter) and baked it off in sheets for savory tarts, plus I made four pans of jalapeno-cheddar cornbread, plus I made 200 mini-cinnamon rolls for a "breakfast bites" buffet in the other restaurant...

Even though I had prepped and organized and planned for Saturday, when it came down to it, there wasn't much time for photo-taking. I was feeling a little down going into it, because, in my experience, women in fancy gowns and men in fitted tuxedos, there to see and be seen, never eat, especially a dessert. I remember in Vegas, when I worked the ice cream station at the annual board meeting for the hotel and had exactly one customer in four hours, and how the chef in charge was nearly in tears at the end of the night because no one had touched his gorgeous sushi set-up, with fish flown in that morning from all over the world.

So I was feeling kind of "I did all this work for nothing." Well, was I surprised. The people pounced on the desserts like hyenas on a downed zebra. I swear I don't know what got into them. The servers were bringing back empty platters faster than we could refill them. For a couple hours, it was madness.

Here's as much of a photo recap as I could manage:

I was happiest with my mini-tart tatins, literally bite-size. I poached the apples in cider, Calvados, cinnamon and rose water. As for "rose water?? what were you thinking??" I do believe apples are related to roses, and besides, shaddup, it worked.

Anyway, here's a shot of the platters in progress before the hyenas arrived. As a bonus, it's also a surreptitious shot of Chef, refilling the coffee machine. One of the things I really respect about him is his work ethic. He'll wash dishes, peel parsnips, take out the linen and get down on his hands and knees to clean the ovens (and refill the coffee machine) if it needs to be done.

A close-up of one of the platters. From left to right, flourless chocolate cakes with raspberries and cream, cream puffs, my freakin' adorable tart tatins, lemon bars, carrot cake with apple cumin butter and cream cheese frosting, financiers soaked in Amaretto, filled with ganache and capped with a candied pecan, more lemon bars and tart tatins and, finally, opera torte mini-slices:

And one more shot for good measure... on the far right is a row of coffee truffles. They were such a nightmare to make. The kitchen was so hot with all the ovens and burners going that my chocolate kept going out of temper and the coffee ganache balls kept liquefying. Like most of the items, I wound up finishing them in the walk-in. And I'm proud to say, 200 coffee truffles later, my chocolate Did. Not. Bloom. Hell yeah.

In addition, I also did plates with bite-size poundcake pieces layered with fresh berries and bruleed sabayon that servers brought to people sitting at tables. I didn't get a picture of that in all the chaos, but you get the idea.

Whew.