Top Chef'ing It

I've always joked around about becoming a chef if the whole lawyer thing didn't work out. My friend Liz and I dreamed of opening up a Mexican-Vietnamese Fusion restaurant named "Krisaliz"- pronounced like chrysalis. (The name is also reserved incase we ever opened up a political consulting firm).

Today I got a little preview of what it would be like to a be a professional caterer. My mom put in an order for 100 Vietnamese meat pie appetizers (pictured right), a Florentine Chicken & Spinach Ring (pictured left), and Spinach & Aritchoke dip.

Trying to cook all of these things simultaneously and in 4 hours was quite the challenge. I guess professional caterers have crews of more than one and better equipped kitchens but I think I fared pretty well by myself. The toughest obstacle was trying to figure out how to keep all the food warm. I put the tray of the meat pies back into the oven, which resulted in some of the juices coming out and starting a small fire in the oven but fortunately I noticed the smoke coming out of the oven and salvaged them all. The only casualty was the oven mit that came out slightly charred, but all of the food still tasted good. My mom's boss even asked me how I got this wonderful "smoky" taste to the meat pies, not even being facetious.

Since it seems like this lawyer thing is actually going to pan out, I might put the chef/catering on the back burner (pun intended). However, today's little cooking adventure made me realize that I really need to compile all of these family recipes of Vietnamese dishes. So I've added making a cookbook, full of pretty pictures, as another life goal. Though the cookbook market is pretty saturated, this is more for me and to distribute to other members of the family. A family cookbook would almost be like a storybook about our family and our history. I'm actually really excited about this and it would be done sooner if I didn't have a billion pages of reading to do in the next 2.5 years.

And I also think I'm adding taking professional cooking lessons to my list of life goals. Hopefully I won't set that kitchen on fire.