Monday, July 2, 2012

KU Dining Week 4: A Day in the Life of an Executive Chef & Catering



Emenadas anyone?
Leslie and I helped to prepare almost 200 empenadas (that smelled delightful!) during our time in the catering kitchen.


I have a personal interest in catering, so this week was extra fun for me. We had the experience of helping and learning about catering an event: everything from booking, to planning a menu, to kitchen preparation to serving and delivery. Catering really does take a full team in order to deliver exceptional results!

In Short:
·      Catering Experience
o   Planning  (Robert Pierlee, Whitney Fox)
o   Kitchen preparation
o   Delivery
·      A day in the life of an Ececutive Chef, Janna Traver
·      A day at Impromptu ( KU’s award-winning full-service restaurant)

Bethany’s Highlight of the Week:


On the day that we spent shadowing Janna Traver, the Executive Chef, I was absolutely mesmerized. The enchantment began as we trailed behind her up several flights of stairs to the rooftop of KU Memorial Unions.  On the rooftop we were introduced to the inconspicuous yet oh so lovely herb garden.  Janna started an herb garden that also includes various types of tomatoes (check out the green zebra tomatoes we picked in the picture) and peppers so that she could use fresh and flavorful items in her creations. Now, that’s passion if you ask me! After pruning, watering and harvesting we followed her back down stairs where we observed her prepare a dish called Maquechoux for a special event that evening—and let me tell you, this was probably one of the most delicious smelling dishes I have ever smelled! She also made a soup from scratch. Janna is strong believer of making soups from scratch, right down to the stock—which she educated us on how preparing soups this way is more cost effective and healthy.  Being amongst the passion, creativity, knowledge and family atmosphere of the kitchen staff in the catering department was my “highlight of the week”.


Impromptu

 Have you ever had the situation where you keep hearing about how awesome a person is, and you think “what makes them so special?”, then you finally meet them and then you have that “Aha” moment? Well, that was what I experienced on Wednesday when Leslie and I met Kim Nixon, the manager of Impromptu. She is hilariously witty, personable and just darn good and what she does! Impromptu Café is KU Dining’s award winning full service restaurant with an affordable menu created by Chef Janna that is simply to die for. This week Leslie and I had the privilege of lunching at Impromptu—try the watermelon lemonade if you get the chance!

 

Friday, a Good Day for Marketing

We closed up our week with a meeting with Sharon Hallum, the Marketing Director and KU Memorial Unions. One of our special projects as interns is to help with social media projects. Sharon’s passion was infectious. She is great at what she does and I am excited to be able to work on a project with her—more to come on that later!


Well, that raps up week 4. I am sad that I only have 4 weeks left, but I am also excited about what’s next!

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