Things to come

With starting the catering business, I am hoping to put more pictures up on here of the food I create. I even set up an email address for the business. If you have any questions about the recipes or have a comment you can email it to:zkitchenzink@ymail.com and that will reach me so I can respond to. I cant tell you what the future holds, but I can tell you that tasty food is coming. Stay tuned and thank you for reading me.

Happy Eating.

Grand Caynon Dinner

Our mini vacation took us to Zion National Park in Utah. We stayed at a hotel that had a restaurant on site. It was a cross between fine dining and your local pizza joint. I don't think it had made up its mind in what it wants to be when it grows up. The appetizer we had was sea scallops and pork belly. I liked the flavor and I thought the dish was well put together. I had the Ahi Tuna and asparagus. I wish they had remembered to peel the vegetables before plating them. My husband had a Buffalo Rib eye. It was good and cooked right, he just would rather prefer cow. My son got the short stick. He first got the hamburger which was way passed its dead date. I could have used it for  a Frisbee , then he got a hot dog. It was deep fried to a crispy critter. So he got mac and cheese which he got when I got into our hotel room. Nice place, just needs to pick an idea and stick with it.  The view was great and so were some of the other places in town. Sadly, I forgot to take pictures of the other food from the other places. I was hungry and ate before thinking of my readers. Below are the pictures from the restaurant we went to.

Happy Eating

Sea Scallops and Pork Belly

Tuna and vegetables

Buffalo Ribeye Steak

Top View of Sea Scallops

Quick Dinner

This I came up with on the fly. Its like hamburger helper except its home made. Just something to get a quick carb fix. Its ground beef 73/27(something like that) and turkey. I seasoned it with salt, pepper, Northwood Seasoning( Penzey's seasoning). Then I took pasta (sigh, boxed) and cooked it to al dente. I made a cream sauce using heavy cream, 1 egg yolk, grated cheese( what ever I had in the fridge) white cheddar, asiago, and Parmesan. Seasoned it with sweet dried basil, kosher salt and white pepper. When the noodles were done cooking, I drained the water(do not rinse, it will cool them too much) and then poured in the cream mixture til it was well melted, then added the ground beef/turkey mix.
I thought it had good flavor and was filling. Most of the family did too, with the exception of my picky eater, my son.


Happy Eating

Z Kitchen Zink

So I have decide to try and do my own catering business. Mostly cakes, pastries, cake balls, little items  that are easy to do and that people love.  This is a work in progress and I am learning as I go. I will probably also change my major or adapt it to fit what I need it to for this. I like doing the pastries and cakes but I also need to know the management side of it. Recently I have learned that this business is very cut throat even by other students here. Apparently, in Utah, they have no morals or not many. For those people who do it, they don't care about who they step on or how they do it to get what they want. Yes, this is kind of a personal vent for me.  I also quit my job at the corporate building working in the cafeteria. My need for clean and very organized chaos does not jive with the thoughts of the executive chef who would rather hire an untrained teen rather than a person versed with culinary experience. His words not mine, " culinary school ruins people." So that is  a place I need not be. I love being in culinary school and learning. I guess our standards are at an impass. I'm trained and he is not. He just got to be executive chef by experience.

If you become unhappy in what you are doing, its time to stop. I do not want to wind up hating my career choice. Staying there would have most certainly killed it.


Happy Eating.

Coffee Steak

I found this recipe in Sandra Lee's cook book and adapted it to fit our family. Its a coffee crusted steak. The gravy also has coffee in it. Its great. I cooked it a little too long. It called for a tenderloin and I used a tri tip instead. I paired it with sauteed vegetables. I cleaned out the frige of what I had for vegetables. If I were to do this again, I would go and get the tenderloin just to see how much of a difference there would be.

Rub
1/4 c Coffee
1/4c brown sugar
2 tbsp paprika
2tbsp chili powder
2tsp sage
1tsp onion powder

you mix that all together and rub it all over the meat. The gravy, is to keep it moist.

1 can beef broth.
drippings from the cooked meat
1 packet of instant coffee
2 tsp of worcestershire sauce
2tbsp of cornstarch

bring the first 4 items to a boil then remove some of the liquid and mix into the cornstarch. Then return the cornstarch slurry to the boiling liquid. It should thicken up. You want it like creamy, nape so it coats the back of a spoon.

This is the final result.

Happy Eating

Baby Cake

This cake I did for a client. They had a  red whale invitation that they wanted me to base the cake off of. It is a classic yellow cake covered in light blue fondant, with the whale being yellow cake covered in Swiss butter cream. Swiss you ask? It is one of the more stable butter creams able to hold up better than the traditional stick of butter and pound of powder sugar butter cream that we all know. It took a lot to dye it red. The hardest part about this cake was getting the rope pieces that were fondant, not to crack. Over all the customer was happy.

Happy Eating.

Castle Cake

This cake was done for my daughter's birthday. It took about 10 hours or so of decorating and about 2-3 hours planning. It was the first time I used fondant to cover a cake completely. Definitely a learning lesson about how to put fondant on a cake. I know now that its better to use a simple syrup than frosting. Always put doll rods in a cake that is more than one tier. That was a big learning lesson as the cake collapsed in the back. It did survive the birthday party. The towers are plastic decorated in fondant and royal frosting. The spire is also plastic with fondant and frosting. I would charge $65 or better for cake like this for a customer.
Made me realize that I wouldn't mind do more of these cakes, just need to work on getting rid of some of the plastic parts and replacing them with cake or chocolate. I can be contacted by email: lmzaehler@ymail.com if you are interested in cakes. I only service the Salt Lake City area at this time. To friends back home, I can tell you how to do this. Its easy.

Happy Eating