Table Talk » A Day in the Life ...

Have you ever wondered what my work days are like? Here's a diary of a recent cook date.

I start smiling as soon as I opened my car door. In spite of the house being all buttoned up, I can hear Poe, my client's bird, singing up a storm. As soon as he hears the car pull in the driveway, he starts singing. I always talk to him as I bring in my gear and the groceries. He rewards me by singing to me. I can't remember what type of bird Poe is, but this is what he looks like.

Poe

After unpacking the groceries, the first thing I do is to use painter's tape to tape the menu and the recipes to the cupboards so that I can see them at the same time. I use Mastercook to plan my cook dates. It's a huge time saver. I store all of my recipes in Mastercook, then I can add recipes to menus and print shopping lists from menus.

Poe

Next I wash all the veggies. When I wash the veggies, I give Poe a snack of greens. Today he got cilantro.

I'm cooking five entrees without side dishes. This client selects their dishes from my menu. Here's what they selected:

Mustard-Thyme Lamb Chops
Rioja Chicken (a Spanish chicken stew)
Lavender, Thyme, and Rosemary Chicken Breasts
Haddock with Cilantro Butter
Sloppy Joes

First up is the Rioja Chicken. I almost always start with the dishes that take longest to cool. This stew is cooked in the pressure cooker. My recipe is based on this recipe from Cooking Light. My version cooks in 18 minutes in the pressure cooker. I adapt a lot of crockpot recipes to the pressure cooker. After a few minutes work, everything is ready to go in the pressure cooker.

In it goes.

The cover gets locked on, the heat is turned up to high, and all I need to do is keep an eye out for when the pressure is up. So I'm off to work on the haddock.

The haddock is seasoned with salt, pepper, and a little chili powder, then baked. It will be finished with a cilantro butter sauce, which I'll make later. Once the fish is in the oven, I start on the lamb.

This client loves these mustard-thyme lamb chops and asks for them almost every time I cook. The first step is to mix the mustard-thyme rub. I chop the garlic and fresh thyme and mix in the oil and mustard. The timer for the Rioja Chicken goes off so that comes off the heat. For this recipe, I let the pressure release naturally, that will take about 10 minutes of sitting off the heat. Then the timer for the fish goes off, so the fish comes out of the oven is set on a rack to cool before being fully cooled in the refrigerator.

Back to the lamb chops. I like to rub the mustard-thyme mixture on the lamb chops and let them sit for at least 30 minutes before cooking them, so that's the next step. First I trim the fat from the chops and then rub on the mustard-thyme mixture. They will sit in the refrigerator for a half hour or so.

The pressure is down on the pressure cooker, so I unlock the cover and remove it. The aroma of the stew floods the kitchen.

I like to thicken this a little bit, so I whisk together some sweet rice flour (mochiko) and water to make a slurry to thicken the sauce. It boils for a few minutes and then is poured into a large pan to cool.

Time for the sloppy joes. They start with chopping onions and garlic. That goes into a saute pan and is cooked until softened. While I onions cook, I take the lamb chops out of the refrigerator, heat the broiler, and arrange the lamb chops on the broiler pan.

I'm using ground turkey for the sloppy joes. It gets added to the pan to brown. Once the broiler is hot, the lamb chops go in.

The sloppy joe sauce is a mixture of tomato paste, cider vinegar, and brown sugar. The seasonings are salt, pepper, basil, and oregano.

The timer goes off and the lamb chops come out of the oven and are set out to cool.

While the sloppy joes simmer, I make the cilantro butter sauce for the fish. I didn't get any pictures of the sauce.

Last up is the Lavender, Thyme, and Rosemary Chicken Breasts. I always like making this recipe because of the unusual (at least to me) cooking method. First, I rub the chicken breasts with a mixture of minced lavender buds, thyme, rosemary, and black pepper.

Next, I sprinkle coarse salt in a dry skillet and heat it until ithe salt is almost smoking.

I sear the chicken on both sides, remove it from the pan, and deglaze the pan with vermouth and add the chicken back to the pan to finish cooking. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the finished dish.

As I'm cooking the chicken, I notice Poe wandering around. He has a cage, but the door is always open. Poe doesn't fly, but sometimes he hops down from his perch and follows me around. I like spending the day with Poe, he makes me laugh. I enjoy his singing and whistling. He seems jealous when I listen to my MP3 player because I don't talk to him as much. If I'm not paying attention to him, he stops singing and sits on his perch. I imagine that he is pouting. Today Poe made it clear that he needed more attention. After following me around for a bit, he climbed up on my shoe, then used his beak to grab on to my pants to help him climb up my leg. He manages to get himself about halfway up to my knee and clings there with his toes and his beak. I know that he wants to be picked up, but he has a tendency to bite people other than his mom, so I just let him cling to my leg as I finish the chicken. After a short time, he gets bored with me and goes back to his perch. I'm not listening my MP3 player, so he sings to me.

During all of this, I've been washing dishes as I go, but there are a few dishes to clean up before I start packaging. The other thing I've done while cooking is to stir dishes that have just finished cooking to help speed up cooling and to move cooling dishes to the refrigerator once they are cool enough to finish cooling in the refrigerator.

I've tried to package the dishes as they cool, but this always seems to take more time for me. I prefer to all my packaging after I am done cooking. For most of my clients, including this client, I vacuum seal the meals. This client gets packages of two servings. I use a MagicVac Maxima vacuum sealer and Foodsaver bags. Everything is labeled with labels printed on my computer.

From the left to the right: Rioja Chicken, Mustard-Thyme Lamb Chops, Lavender, Thyme, and Rosemary Chicken Breasts, Haddock with Cilantro Butter Sauce, and Sloppy Joes.

I wash the final dishes, pack up my gear and take it out to the car. I also tie up the trash and put that in the garage and put all of the recycling in my client's recycling bin. After all my stuff is put away, I write out the invoice, and write a quick note to my client on the menu. The last thing I do before leaving is to give Poe another snack. My client always has greens in the refrigerator. Today Poe gets some arugula for his goodbye snack.

Posted March 10, 2008 12:30 PM in Cook Dates

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13 Comment(s)

MarcyK said… (on March 10, 2008 at 13:15 PM #)

TOTALLY enjoyable! I always love it when clients have pets. It makes the day so much fun. The food looks amazing and Poe looks so content on your leg. Thanks for sharing your day. :)

Tami said… (on March 10, 2008 at 17:15 PM #)

What a great view of a 'day in the life'. I enjoyed seeing your audience as well - lucky bird.

Martha said… (on March 10, 2008 at 17:19 PM #)

Patti, What a wonderful glimpse into a day in the life of a personal chef. Thank you!

francie said… (on March 10, 2008 at 19:55 PM #)

Patti, I really enjoyed reading about a day in the life of....the bird was really cute, too.

Thanks!

Sharon Worster said… (on March 10, 2008 at 20:51 PM #)

Poe is a cockatiel! What a great pet to talk to while you are cooking. Much better than cats that try to swipe your chicken breasts! This is a great 'Day in the Life of a Personal Chef' blog Patti!

Debra Lane said… (on March 11, 2008 at 00:38 AM #)

Beautiful~! Those lamb chops look amazing!

Heather Mader said… (on March 12, 2008 at 11:01 AM #)

This is a great peek into what another personal chef does.... we all do the same thing, but have different styles. I love that! I'd really love to know how you get all those wet foods (like stew) to seal in a foodsaver bag? This is the reason I pretty much gave up on my foodsaver bag - it wouldn't seal anything that even had a sauce!!??

Stu Drexler said… (on March 13, 2008 at 17:29 PM #)

Patti
You are very organized and efficient. You make my mouth water just looking at the food you are prepairing. Those are some really lucky clients and one very happy bird.

Jeff Lavia said… (on March 13, 2008 at 18:17 PM #)

Patti, I so enjoyed spending the day with you. It is always a great way to learn by watching how someone else does the same job you do. This was a great post. Thank-you for sharing.

Jan H said… (on March 13, 2008 at 19:41 PM #)

Since I'm always looking for ways to make my chef day more organized and faster, I figured I'd "tag along" with you since you're one of my mentor chefs. In my 3 years of cheffing I've never worked with or observed another PC, so this is the closest I've come to shadowing one. I'm relieved to find my day goes much like yours. And I'm still puzzled about why it takes me so danged long!

Thanks for the peek into your routine!

Michele C said… (on March 15, 2008 at 13:05 PM #)

You make it look so easy! I live vicariously through all who have meal clients! I'm stuck in the land of Dinner Parties - which I love - but I'm ready for some daytime clients! Thanks for sharing.

Patti said… (on March 21, 2008 at 20:23 PM #)

Heather, I use a MagicVac vacuum sealer, not a FoodSaver. The main reason that I prefer the MagicVac is because it has a vacuum "volume" control that allows you to control the intensity of the vacuum. For saucy dishes or for delicate items (like biscuits), I turn the vacuum towards the minimum setting. I also use the manual seal button for most packages. For saucy dishes I also hang the bag over the edge of the counter so that the contents of the bag is lower than the counter. I use FoodSaver bags with my MagicVac sealer.

Selena F said… (on April 14, 2008 at 20:42 PM #)

Patti, what a beautiful setup! You are very organized while you are cooking. Those little cockatiels can be a bit needy. What a great cookdate companion.


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