[Sca-cooks] Regretable foods....and fixes OOP

[Nicolas Steenhout]

>So, my related question would be, what's the worst
>kitchen disaster you've ever faced, and how did you fix it?

Well, I was head chef in a holiday camp for kids.  We'd have 450 kids
between 6 and 16, plus the counselors, from 17 to 22 or so.  The kids would
stay at camp from 4 to 10 weeks.  Had to rotate menus a fair bit.

One night, after my day off (9 days on, 1 day off), we were serving roasted
chicken.  I'd asked my second to pull out the chicken out of the
freezer.  Boxes of 20 pound of chicken parts.

We served everything, and ran short.  I couldn't figure out why.  Well, my
second hadn't pulled out *all* the boxes out from the fridge.  He'd put the
boxes from freezer to fridge all right, but forgot two cases in the walk-in
fridge corner.

So kids hungry, some tables didn't even get "seconds", let alone
thirds.  Camp director, furious, walks in, screams a lot.

So here I was with 40 pounds of chicken that needed to be cooked two hours
ago!  Thank the gods for deep fryers!  I cooked the chicken in several
batches in two deep fryers, then would toss them in jars of BBQ sauce, and
serve as they'd be ready.

Amazingly enough, feedback from all the kids was that the chicken was
*awesome*.  Camp director came back in at the end of the meal and asked
that chicken be prepared like that at all time from now on!  Heheheheh

Same camp, different year.  50 gallon of turkey soup stock, made from
bones/carcasses of turkeys served the previous day.  I tell the youngest
kitchen aid (16 or so) to strain the stock.  Explained the
procedure.  Clean kitchen sink thoroughly.  Put colander in sink, carry
over stock pot, pour pot in colander.  He did all that, but he didn't put
the *stopper* in the sink's hole...  The kid thought I wanted to keep the
bones, not the liquid.......  Fix was easy enough...  After putting a hole
in the wall from banging my head on it, I pulled out the goold old powdered
chicken base.  <shrug>

Muiredach mac Loloig
Rokkehealden Shire
aka
Nicolas Steenhout
"You must deal with me as I think of myself" J. Hockenberry