Everything is Kosher

I just had my first Kosher serving experience!  It was great.  The kosher-ness was almost, mostly lost on me.  If there wasn't a Rabbi present, I might not have noticed.  We didn't serve any meat and dairy together and there was obviously no pork.  Also, none of us cooks were allowed to bring our own knives.  Everything at the gig was supplied by Nava catering which specializes in serving kosher food in a kosher manner.

The event was thrown by Hillel:  the largest Jewish campus organization in the world.  The dinner was a fundraiser for the campus.  I didn't get to see a lot of the event because I was with the service folks behind a big black curtain.  However, there was a giant screen in front of us, so I did get to see parts of the speeches and some of the powerpoint (backwards of course).

There were about 12 VCC students helping plate the appetizers, salad, main course, and dessert.  Kam, Diana, Brie, Zach, and I represented our block.  Even though the head chef, Harvey Salmon, was blustering and rushing, there were more than enough hands to get the job done.  At times, we were often left standing around trying to find something to do.  When it came time to plate dinner, everyone formed four assembly lines and then we proceeded to plate 400 plates and they all had to look exactly the same.  The dinner had seven components:  wild and brown rice pilaf, a green pea puree, gai choy, tiny baby carrots, sesame crusted sablefish, pea sprout garnish, and a lemony emulsion.  It sort of felt like I was working in an Eastern bloc communist catering outfit:  Harvey Salmon would come around and yell something, the Rabbi would occasionally peer over our shoulders, then Keiko-san (the sous chef) would holler at us to make the plates nicer, then there would be a stop in the line as the communication broke down between the food runner, the platers, and the servers.  Suddenly things would rev up again and it was go, go, go.  And then it was done and we were left standing around again.  And of course like in any good Communist system, we were being paid to loiter.  Then came dessert.  The final course was a chocolate bombe with an orange pistachio tuile, raspberry coulis, blueberries, and a gold-leafed gooseberry.  It looked beautiful and tasted sweet but delicious.  Right, I forgot to mention that when all the plating was done, and just before clean-up, all of us got to have a little taste of everything.  The dinner was okay, just like wedding food is okay, but the dessert was really yummy.  I think I ate my weight in tuiles, which is no easy feat considering they are paper thin and made mostly of egg-whites.