One Night, Twelve Kitchens

This evening, I participated in the ONE NIGHT, TWELVE KITCHENS event at the Midwest Culinary Institute at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College. This is the second annual occurance of this fundraising event. The monies raised benefit the students in the Culinary program. Read more about the event at AroundCinci.COM by clicking this link.

I arrived at school at 3:00 and reported to the kitchen. I was assigned to work with the gang from Jean-Robert at Pigall’s, Chef Meg Galvin, and a few other students. The dishes we were serving were a red wine risotto with provincal vegetables and basil cream sauce; and a vichyssoise (made with watercress and cauliflower) with jasmine rice and spring vegetables. We got started making vegetable stock, prepping vegetables and other ingredients for those dishes. A couple hours later, a few of the guys from Pigall’s arrived and we kicked it into high gear and finished our preparation in time for the ‘beauty shots’ of the prepared dishes and the meet-and-greet with guests who filed through our kitchen to watch us working.

Finally, we moved up to the serving floor (the savory dishes were set up on the first floor, pastries and other sweets were on the second floor) and got set up for the onslaught of the 400+ guests. Seeing that the crew had our station well-staffed, I was re-assigned to help the chef from Brown Dog Cafe who was working alone serving Flank Steak with Roasted Red & Golden Beets, Goat Cheese, and Red & Gold Beet Vinaigrette. Once I got him out of the weeds, I was able to wander around and sample some of the other dishes before we wrapped up, broke down our station, and moved back to the prep kitchen to clean up and call it a night. I arrived home around 11:00, tired, sore, but happy to have participated in this event.