Yes, it has been a long time. I’ve actually considered deleting this journal because I’ve been so busy and it’s become such a huge spam trap, but since next to no one reads it, I guess it’s all good.

Chef has finally come up with the first official appetizer for the restaurant: Caribbean Egg Rolls with a Spicy Sweet & Sour Sauce.

These were developed for his Garde Manger class. For the final, each student must come up with one cold and one warm appetizer for 24 people. This is his warm appetizer.

He took a Caribbean salad recipe and made the following changes:

» replaced the lettuce with cabbage and cut down the amount a little
» added shredded carrots
» added some chicken

Now the salad had a dressing which he used as a marinade, but couldn’t be used as is in the actual egg roll. So he made the salad as usual with the above changes, marinated it all in the dressing, and then wrapped it in egg roll wrappers and fried it like usual egg rolls.

He also modified a hot sweet and sour sauce. He didn’t want it too spicy, but with just a little bit of a kick. The two items marry well, and the sauce has a nice sweetness of flavor that works well with the sweetness of the egg rolls, but that spicy kick is enough to keep that sweetness from being too overwhelming. You can’t see it, but the sauce has a nice texture and speckling, and it’s a much lighter color than this picture shows, almost a golden red-brown. Very pretty.

And in a few, he’ll be working on his cold appetizer: an Avocado Soup in Tortilla Bowls.