Blog #7 - S'mores

Today, we began our morning at Chef Lyons's house as always, but we prepared a dessert for another catering event: s'mores for 100 people for David's mom's event at University Hospitals! To recreate s'mores in an elegant and sophisticated style, we used Chef Lyons's recipe, which involved creating chocolate ganache (melted chocolate basically) and using that to cover marshmallows on sticks, coated with graham cracker crumbs. We started off by sticking marshmallows with sticks, which took a couple minutes. Afterwards, we went over to the stove and melted Hershey bars through the double boiler method which involves placing a bowl over a boiling pot of water to melt the chocolate. If we just had a pan on the flame, it would scorch the chocolate. The double boiler method reduces the risk of the chocolate turning into inedible black carbon. After we melted the chocolate, we dipped our marshmallow sticks into the melted chocolate then rolled it in graham cracker crumbs, which we blended. This was definitely the most time-consuming part of the entire process as each stick probably took around 30 seconds to do each. In total, we did 100 refined s'mores! Just for show, we took a brulee torch and briefly heated the outside of the s'more to make it taste like campfire s'mores. After packaging them up, we started the oregano vinaigrette. While we followed a recipe at first, we had to adjust and adapt after each batch by tasting. If it needed more viscosity, we would add more olive oil for example. For lunch, Chef Lyons took us to the nearby Aladdin's to taste their menu and see how our hummus compared to theirs. While ours was a bit chunkier (due to them leaving their blenders on all day), the taste of both was spot on, which is a good sign for us! By the time we got back at Chef's house, we only had time to take home vegetables to cut up for Monday's catering event. Over the weekend, we will have to slice cucumbers into sticks for hummus, small dice them for Israeli couscous, mince garlic and parsley, and large dice potatoes for the Spanish chicken. Seriously, for Chef to trust us that much to prep and cook for 100 important guests on Monday means a lot of me and my peers! (also I am very grateful to all the produce, equipment, and time Chef has lent to us over the past few weeks!!)

Comments

  1. Rachel MullenMay 28, 2019 at 6:11 PM

    George, thank you for catching up on your blogs! It was nice to see you in action on Monday, and I'm sure that the residents at Ronald McDonald House loved your dishes. I thought it was interesting that you experimented with your dishes before you served them to the 100+ people you served. At least you got to "'experiment" on the Speech and Debate team. :) When I got to visit you on site, I liked how Chef Lyons let you discover for yourselves what ingredients were missing from each dish. Again, I love the pictures you posted! Great blogs! - Mrs. Mullen

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