Scale

[snousle]

This week's goal is to get production up to the thousand-piece level for appetizers. I will probably only actually make 500 of two different things, but getting everything just-so at large scale is critical.

One of the appetizers will be the cucumber rounds with hummus. I score the cucumbers before slicing to get a flashy striped effect. Very attractive, quick to make, easy to eat, everyone likes them, they're vegan, and they're cheap. (The tahini is actually the most expensive part of them - at $10/lb it dominates their cost.) For the other, I'm learning to make profiteroles. Easy to spell, and it's amusing to find that the word is derived from "profit". No wonder caterers make them so often. I'm thinking of filling them with something like chicken tarragon mousse. What terrifies me is the process of mixing the dough - apparently beating air into it is important and I don't know how that's going to scale up in larger batches. I will probably have to do an initial test batch by hand, then an intermediate-sized batch which I can repeat several times to get to a thousand of them. I bet chefxh has some advice... ;-)

A small advance this morning - an improved ironing layout. It turns out that ironing cloth napkins is much faster and gets better results when done on a countertop on top of a towel. In fact, now that I think about it, this is something that ought to be done in the kitchen - where there are already large expanses of flat, clean, heat-resistant counters. Duh.

Of course most restaurant napkins don't need ironing, but the nature of my business is such that nothing so bourgeois as polyester would ever touch my clients' lips. So 100-percent cotton it is.

Comments

[chefxh.livejournal.com]

Try making your own tahini: toast sesame seeds and purée in the robot coupe with a little olive oil.

Choux paste? Um... use shortening and a mixture of half water, half milk. Use bread flour, and add it all at once. They're never as dry as you want them to be. I have Gisslen's serviceable recipe if you would like one.

[chefxh.livejournal.com]

oh, and for a thousand pieces I would probably do three batches.

[theotherqpc.livejournal.com]

seconded. pate a choux loses a lot of its puff as it cools.

[dorisduke.livejournal.com]

Well Tony nothing bugs me like going to a nice restaurant and paying a bunch for the experience only to find wrinkled napkins and table cloths.

[darkphuque.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm never heard of incorporating air into Choux Paste. Its the eggs that cause leavening. Bread flour is a good idea; although I always use butter whether savory or dessert

To dry them which allow you to store them in an air tight container... cut 1/4 off the top, scoop out the soft dough, and pit them and the tops in a warm 150 deg/f-180 deg/f oven for about an hour. They will be crisp and usable for wet materials.