Just start typing and see what comes

I heard the other day about a prolific author who was asked how he was able to produce so many books whilst others really struggle. His response was just write 200 words a day and the rest will follow. So that is what I am attempting to do here. Start and see what comes. When it comes to blogging starting is my, I want to say greatest challenge, but really, it is actually just the first challenge. Now that I have overcome that I can see what other challenges arise. Providing interesting content might well prove a greater hurdle.

So what should I write about. How about food. I am a chef. I cook food for a living. I work Monday to Friday, 6.30am to 2.30pm. At least those are the hours I am paid to work. The challenge, I think I may be over using that word is time management. I want to claim more of my life for me. That is not to say that I don't give my all to my food and care about what I put up for my customers each day. I am one chef cooking  baine marie held food for about 100 to 120 people a day. I work for a company which leases the premises of another company (our client) to provide a staff cafe for their employees. We have a manager who is a Catering Assistant, a barista and another Catering Assistant or CA for short.

So, what do we provide. The Barista provides what you would expect i.e. coffee. The CA's set up a sandwich bar and provide mostly made to order sandwiches and wraps. They also serve the hot baine. I provide 3 different meals a day, two containing meat and a vegetarian meal to serve aproximately 20. As well as this I make a salad for about another 20 visitors. The menu changes daily and it is my job to write a new menu each week. On top of this I also cook breakfast. The usual suspects are provided at breakfast, bacon, fried eggs, sausages, hash browns and grilled tomato or at least it would be if we had a grill. It is actually baked tomato. On top of that there is a weekly cycle of breakfast, not so special, specials. Monday French toast, Tuesday sausage roll, Wednesday eggs Benedict, Thursday ham, tomato and cheese melt, and Friday scrambled eggs on toast.

I think I am past those 200 words I spoke about at the start of this piece, now I have to find some interesting content.

What do I cook? Let me grab a typical menu. Thursday is roast day, roast beef one week, roast chicken the next, then lamb and finally pork with crackling. I roll through and after four weeks it is back to the beginning again. These days it is about 18 to 20 kilograms of meat. Many chefs would cook the meat the day before and slice and reheat on the day of service. Personally I like to cook and slice on the day. Hot meat is easier to slice and there is less of a food safety issue if you do it all on the same day. Food doesn't spend as long in the danger zone where harmful bacteria can do it's thing. What temperature makes up the danger zone? 5 to 60 degrees Celsius. The objective is to keep food out of that zone for as much of it's life as possible. That's the brief of it.

Friday is fish day. Hoki caught in New Zealand waters. What is Hoki? Hoki is a white fleshed fish found in the waters around New Zealand, southern Australia and off the coasts of South America. Why do we use it? Because it is both cheap and sustainable. By the time it gets to us in a frozen packet of I think, about 5 kilograms, it is also boneless. The fish rotation is smaller than the roast rotation. Battered fish one week, crumbed the next and a simple seafood basket in week three. If the client invests in a grill there will be a fourth item to the rotation being grilled fish, but that is yet to occur. They are not exactly in a hurry to spend money on us, which I do understand in that we are probably see as nothing more that an expense, but a little bit of cash thrown our way would be nice. Fish is the most popular item of the week, which is why the rotation isn't too big. We sell about 65 fish on a Friday against the normal allowance of about 40 of a regular meat dish.

Somewhere in the menu is a curry, usually on a Monday containing chicken as that allows me to get my meat order in on a Monday to ensure freshness for the remainder of the week. I get chicken on a Friday for Monday's menu and then as required for the rest of the week. What sort of dishes do I cook, Thai red and green chicken curries, various Indian curries although the norm is one curry a week. There is a pasta dish somewhere in the mix. I have tried to keep them a little lighter over the last year but do still like the occasional creamy bacon and mushroom boscaiola. A burger each week of some type. Good old fashioned beef burger is always a winner, as well as pulled pork rolls, chicken fillet burgers, I favour the thigh fillet sometimes marinated in Tandoori paste or a satay chicken burger can be good too.

My company like us to run a selection of healthy dishes, at least one each day which are recipes created by the head office food gurus to provide a push in the direction of healthy living. They are mainly based around, in my opinion, the idea of less meat and carbohydrates and more vegetables.  This of course is what current ideas of health food entail but customers often feel a little ripped off if they don't get as much meat in their fish as they usually get in a typical meal. I have found that if I run the healthy meat dish up against the fish then the lessoning of sales doesn't hurt the menu's balance.

Beef stroganoff, pork goulash, chicken cacciatore are but a few of the regulars to feature. Grabbing a few popular dishes from your local Chinese restaurant is an easy way to fill the spaces including Mongolian lamb and sweet and sour pork.

As they say and so much more. I will save the rest for next time. I try not to back dishes up too quickly for basically I need, there are some exceptions as mentioned above, about 120 different dishes to fill a 6 week cycle. That is quite a lot but it is important to not become too repetitive.

More thoughts from the kitchen to come in future weeks. I feel as though I have achieved something here by just getting the first words on the page (maybe page isn't the right word). Screen perhaps is more digitally appropriate.
 Hope you enjoy
Chef G