My new job: private chef

So, an interesting new track opened the other day.  In addition to my work at Sushi Q, I will now be starting as the private chef for Ben Sandzer-Bell, CEO of CO2 Bambu, a company which builds low-cost post disaster bamboo homes.  My first task was to create a three course meal for his family and two investment officers of LGT (the social impact finance fund of the prince of Lichtenstein).  I was asked to use as many Nicaraguan ingredients as possible to give the dinner a local/ Latin American theme.  The first curveball arrived about thirty minutes prior to dinner.  I was just about finished when I received the news that the investors plane was cancelled and the meal was rescheduled for the next day.  Luckily, I had chosen two of three courses that could essentially be made completely ahead of time (and a quick desert) so all went fine.

First course- Chilled curry corn soup with lime, mint oil and sweet chili sauce

Right when given my task, my first thought was to start with a soup.  Soups are well within my comfort zone and its a great way to start a meal.  To me, the perfect soup is a small portion, packed with flavor  and ideally with a crunchy/ textural garnish.  I cooked the corn in coconut milk along with the bare cobs for extra corn flavor.  The coconut milk gave the soup a very nice richness/ creaminess, cut by the acid of the lime.  My one critique of the dish is that the corn kernels on top were slightly on the chewy side (as opposed to crunchy).  This was probably because they were cooked the day before and reheated.  

Second course- Chiles en Nogada

So there's obviously nothing groundbreaking about stuffing a chile pepper.  With that said, there's something to be said for a classic dish and to me nothing says classic Mexican food like a Chile en Nogada.  Although every Mexican region/ cook will have its own version, the typical Chile en Nogada is a poblano pepper stuffed with meat, fruits, raisins, tomatoes onions and nuts with a crema and walnut based sauce.  For fruits I used apple peach and dried cherries.  For the meat, Chef Kevin from Imagine hooked me up with some beautiful cornish hens.  I brined them overnight in a mix of salt, honey, cinnamon bay leaf and garlic and roasted them the next day.  The sauce is made of ground walnuts, cream, goat cheese and nutmeg.  The tartness of the sauce is nice with the sweet stuffing, but since both aspects are pretty rich, I made a simple salad of greens and tomatoes with a lime vinaigrette to be served family style.

Third course- Caramel bananas with a sea salt nutella chocolate sauce and walnuts

So, I've been playing with savory flavors in caramel for the last week.  Salt really brings out the flavor of caramel, so I have some fish sauce in there as well as a touch of chili sauce.  The addition of the chili sauce isn't to make the dish spicy per se, but to give it a hit of warmth. If you're not particularly looking for it, you may not even notice it.

So, my first private chef gig was a hit.  It was a lot of preparation ahead of time, but this ended up working in my favor.