Although meals eaten outdoors always have a certain splendor, there are certainly key elements to planning and preparing your moveable feast that help ensure delicious tastes, food safety, and a pretty presentation. Use this checklist and have fun!

1. Spruce up sandwich presentation by layering colorful wrapping paper with parchment or wax paper. Wrap like you would a present, tucking in the ends.
2. Don’t forget the corkscrew, a sharp knife, a bread knife, small cutting board, and water.
3. Bacteria and germs need the combination of food, moisture, and heat to grow. Temperatures between 40 and 140 degrees are not suitable for food storage and foods left in these temperatures for over four hours are firmly inside the “danger zone.” In hot weather (above 90 degrees) food should never sit for more than 1 hour. Any left over left out for more than 2 hours should be thrown away and always keep foods covered and in shady spots. The Partnership for Food Safety Education publishes very helpful information about safe food handling practices. ChefsLine is well versed in many food handling issues - do not hesitate to call us when in doubt.
4. Lay a plastic tarp first so you can use that pretty blanket for seating.
5. Bring a trash bag, wet naps, and of course, plates and forks.
6. Prepare dishes that taste good at room-temperature including sandwiches, salads, and cheeses.
7. Include a crunchy, lively salad as one dish to balance textures.
8. And, unlike a cooler whose plastic and damp insides often give me pause before opening, there is nothing that says “look inside!” like a pretty picnic basket!
9. Sources: Red butcher paper to wrap sandwiches or line tables Source http://www.pospaper.com
10. Sources for red checkered take-out containers: http://www.plumparty.com/. http://www.mrtakeoutbags.com/
11. Other ideas- Have the kids design own bags with stickers and markers. Wrap their own sandwiches with pretty plastic wrapping and stickers. Styrofoam soup containers can be decorated with markers and stickers too.
12. Keep raw meats wrapped tightly and separately from cooked foods and those meant to be consumed raw.
13. Pack ahead: Pack perishable foods at the last minute with ice or ice packs, and be sure not to open it too frequently.

INGREDIENTS
1 pound dry lo mein noodles, cooked and cooled
1/2 pound fresh spinach, cleaned (about 2 q)
2 tablespoon chopped ginger
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup warm water
1-2 tablespoon siracha sauce, or similar chili paste/sauce
3/4 cup peanut butter
1 cup chopped Virginia peanuts
1 cup waterchestnuts, diced
1/4 cup toasted sesame oil

METHOD
Blanch spinach in boiling salted water for about 10 seconds. Drain, cool in cold water.Drain, press out all excess water. Rough chop the spinach and add to the Lo mein noodles. In a mixing bowl or food processor, combine all remaining ingredients, reserving 1/2 the chopped peanuts. Toss.

Buttermilk-dipped fried chicken

Petite country ham biscuits with spicy brown mustard

Lima bean and tomato salad, bacon and egg dressing

Red Cabbage Slaw with roasted corn, toasted pecans, julienne of spring onions and parsley tossed in a red wine vinaigrette.

Chilled Lo Mein noodles with Spinach and Virginia peanut dressing

White Chocolate-Cherry Bars

Chilled Grand Cru Chablis, Pete’s Summer Ale, Heineken light

Our selection of do-ahead salads taste great at room temperature and compliment many different menu styles. Serve in colorful cups to vary your food presentation.

Couscous salad with, dried apricot slices, golden raisins, currants, cherries, orange zest, caramelized onion and garlic, fresh thyme and parsley, tossed in a white wine vinaigrette.

Asian pear and grilled pineapple salad with julienned daikon radish, mango, red pepper, spring onion and black sesame seeds tossed in seasoned rice wine vinegar.

Roasted trio potato (fingerling, red and purple) salad with caramelized onions and garlic, spring onions, parsley, and crisp lardons tossed in a dijon vinaigrette.

Grilled asparagus salad with caramelized onions, fried prosciutto and warm sage vinaigrette.

Haricot verts salad with toasted pine nuts/walnuts, red onion and marjoram vinaigrette, and crumbled Greek feta.

Grilled fennel and blood orange salad with basil, and red wine vinaigrette.

Orzo salad with grape tomato halves, grilled and diced zucchini and yellow squash, diced and caramelized onion and garlic, Kalamata olive halves, fresh thyme, and toasted pistachios tossed in extra- virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Get expert tips and step by step directions on how to caramelize onions from ChefsLine. Keeping the surface area of the bottom of the saute pan completely covered during cooking to ensure even caramelization of the onions.

Ingredients:

3 lbs. onions, sliced 1/8″ thick

5 tablespoons canola oil

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, warm the canola oil until hot. Add the onions. Cook, stirring occasionally, being sure to cover the bottom of the pan entirely with the onions after each time you stir. As you are cooking, the onions are going to shrink in volume and no longer cover the bottom of the pan, at this point, place a smaller skillet over medium-heat heat and warm 1 tablespoon of canola oil, once it is hot, transfer the onions to the smaller pan and finish the cooking in the smaller pan. Continue to cook until the onions are completely caramelized and are bronz in color- about 30-35 minutes. Remember to always cover the bottom of the pan completely after every time you stir. Season with salt and pepper and serve. To reheat: cook over low heat for 10 minutes.

Bakers vs. Cooks

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“Baking is freaking hard. It is not sexy. It is not fun. You will not get your own cooking show, not even a chef’s coat. Baking exists somewhere between art, science, and alchemy, and unless you are willing to dedicate a significant portion of your life to it – let’s say your days and your nights for starters – don’t bother.” –Matt Batt, “The Path of Righteousness” Tin House Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 1.

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I first fell into culinary work through baking. All of my early experience was with European-style pastries and breads, and my first teacher was a self-proclaimed “20^th Century Wilderness Woman,” whose approach baking was more of an ode to the work of women than that of a food-service worker, like a Druidic priestess performing a well-rehearsed ritual (in fact, she had waist-length red hair and could occasionally be found riding naked on horseback through the woods, but enough about her).

Even later in my career, my considerable baking experience led to opportunities in similar capacities; I would be put in charge of the breads and pastries of whatever restaurant I was working at, thereby creating a niche for myself which was often somewhat separated from the other kitchen staff and the atmosphere in which they worked.

You might say I was pigeon-holed, but I wouldn’t. My specialization immersed me into a time-honored trade and was never lacking in new skills and techniques to learn and apply. From there, I was indoctrinated into the rest of the kitchen, until over time I became as well-rounded as any chef, but with fondness for my creative roots, which were more like an apprenticeship than boot camp.

My father’s last words to me were to remind me that I could do whatever I wanted in life, and reminded me when I was young that most chefs were men. He, however, rarely even set foot in the kitchen, except to pour his morning cuppa-joe. It was my mother who first educated me on the joy of cooking, and my father’s mother who first introduced me to baking.

The modern professional kitchen is usually modeled on the old European brigade system, where each cook is a soldier and has a specified job to do. That is where the double-breasted chef’s coat comes from, and the high chef’s hat. The bigger the hat, the higher-ranking the chef, so that the soldier-cook can locate his captains among the platoon of workers. Each cook has a specific job to do, and are regularly reminded of the limits to their autonomy. They vie for esteem in a sometimes hostile environment, each double-breasted white-jacketed, puffy-hatted (or worse, paper-hatted), checkered-pants-wearing soldier doing his own chore, mindful of the sphere of control of the next chef, and especially respectful of the range of power of those chefs who rank above him, the executive chef and the sous chef, i.e. the chief and the second chief.

Testosterone, in my experience, abounds in the kitchen. The stereotypical cook is male, and the women who go into the trade are often seen as strong and independent, but not necessarily feminine. The professional kitchen has a distinctive patriarchal, martial feel. Add to this atmosphere hot and sharp objects, and it is easy to see why cooks often raise their voices and bark commands and warnings at one another. It can be stressful to cook in a restaurant.

One might argue that the brigade system is genderless, that men and women are equals and are no different in the kitchen, and to this I would agree; women are not discriminated against in this environment, so long as they, like everyone else, conform to their assigned role and perform their duties well. But the brigade system is inherently masculine in design – a battalion, a regiment. Historically women were not allowed to join their ranks, and the fact that they do now and perform well should be seen more as a testament to their ability to hack it in an infantryman’s environment than be viewed as a sign that the brigade system has become somehow feminized.

Cooks can often be found hollering kitchen jargon at one another as they attempt, with varying degrees of success, to work as a team. Each plate they make is unique to a particular patron, and so thusly each task they perform as individuals-sharing-space. Cooks must make each plate as the customer orders it, when and how they want it.

Of course, once a cook has attained a certain skill level, he becomes the artist-chef, almost a cliché at this point in our culture. The artist-chef is beyond reproach, a living legend in his own eyes.

When the workload has been large enough to call for the joined efforts of more than one baker, I have seen them perform more as a hive of insects than as a brigade of soldiers, all of the bakers working together on the same task, often in meditative silence, performing repetitive physical movements. Large quantities of dough or batter will be mixed, then formed, then baked, then prepared for sale and display. It is not uncommon for bakers to have music playing on a small, flour-dusted radio while all of them form loaves or bread or cut scones with their hands, chatting leisurely with one another while their bodies perform Herculean tasks, or wordless.

One of the difficulties isolated to baking is that each recipe is a formula, with exact measurements and exacting procedures required for success. This is true. But like all repeated actions, the body will remember, and eventually, with practice, baking becomes second nature. You Zen it.

There is something primal about baking. Although an advanced pastry chef can create culinary works of art, she begins with very basic ingredients: flour, water, butter, salt, sugar. And yeast. A baker’s medium is often alive, growing and changing, at least part of the time she works with it.

Bakers use their bare hands. Dough collects under their nails, and spices in the creases of their knuckles.

Also, bakers keep odd hours, and work only in the back, where their interaction with the clientele equals zero. In fact, a baker’s product will be bought and consumed anonymously, as far as the baker is concerned, and the customer never meets her, or observes her at work.

Bakers, often, for some reason, a hodgepodge of characters straight out of literature, come together to create a harmonious working environment, to create one confederated bakery out of their combined personalities. Ironically, many bakers, who work so uniformly, are social oddballs.

The distinction I am making between the baker and the cook is not so big a rift as that between the front of the house and the back of the house, i.e. wait staff and kitchen personnel. Rather, it is a more subtle distinction – the back of the house vs. the very back of the house. But the implications run deep like still water. It involves two diametrically opposed worlds in which food and its preparation take on two totally independent functions. It may be where man and woman parted ways at the beginning of time. The chef borrows elements of comfort food every day, and has developed its production into a well-oiled machine, and it makes him pretty good money, but it was his mom who first put joy and nourishment on the table.

Jennifer Abadi: Chef Jennifer remembers tuna sandwiches like many remember chicken soup - little platters full of the treasures on days she was home sick. Her mom used white bumble bee tuna, Hellman’s mayonnaise, lemon juice, and sometimes celery. She mounded the salad on toasted white bread, and always cut the sandwich on a diagonal. But the love didn’t stop there, Jennifer’s sandwiches always came with a garnish, a pickle, a cup of soup, something extra. As if a plate full of her favorite tuna sandwich didn’t already make her special time home from school with her mom filled enough. Jennifer swears that no matter how many times she’s tried, she can’t recreate the tuna salad. Lucky for her, she still lives in the same building as her mom and gets the special sandwich when she most needs it.

Sing Along!

Elizabeth Meltz: My mom made tuna salad by opening a can of Bumble bee, draining the water into the sink, and emptying the meaty contents into a small metal bowl with high sides. With a large wooden tablespoon she’d add two huge dollops of Hellman’s, a large pinch or two of dried parsley, the same of oregano, and some salt and freshly ground pepper. With a fork she’d mash and mix and scrape, metal against metal, a horrible, grating sound that should have been excruciating, but instead was a pleasure, indicating the goodness of tuna salad to come. Today I return the favor by making tuna salad for my mother: in a plastic bowl, with imported Italian tuna packed in olive oil, with fresh chopped parsley and scallions.

Jennifer Beisser: To this day, I can’t help but think of tuna fish as health food that comes in a turquoise Tupperware bowl and is best relished over a lunchtime soap opera. I loved watching the day’s love affairs with mom during lunch. Still, whether I was having my favorite peanut butter and peach jelly on wheat, cut on the diagonal, or an incredible leftover from last night’s home cooked meal, most of my attention was on mom and her salad. The smell of tuna was so…..healthy! but the crunch, crunch, crunch of chopped lettuce, celery, carrots or cucumbers, and Italian dressing always made me think that one day I would be a busy mom taking a break to enjoy a daily ritual.

Technorati Tags: tuna, family, recipes, cooking

Although often misconceived as “Mexican Independence day,” Cinco de Mayo is an expression of pride for Mexican-Americans, particularly for the nearly 200,000 Poblanos (people from the city of Puebla) living in New York City. Cinco de Mayo is a celebration of the victory of Mexican forces over the French in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. Puebla, Mexico’s fourth-largest city, has been at the center of political leadership in Mexico for many generations. In the late 1990’s, however, the impact of urbanization and particularly NAFTA hastened the move of nearly 100,000 Poblanos to NYC. For New York City, previously noted for its lackluster Mexican restaurant food, there has since been a Mexican food renaissance. Mole, which originated in the “Cocina Poblano,” is a featured preparation in many notable restaurants here. For the homecook, shoppers can now find authentic Mexican produce and ingredients in grocery stores all over the City, but particularly in East Harlem and Jackson Heights. While perhaps New Yorkers celebrate Cinco De Mayo with a more authentic perspective today, it was the Chicano movement of the late 60’s that first brought this celebration of Mexican Heritage to every part of the United States. Food, drink, and festivals are core elements of Mexican culture and we are fortunate to have Cinco De Mayo to celebrate along with our neighbors, family, and friends today.

1 pound dark chocolate (56 to 64% cacao)

Suggested brands:Â Callebaut, Scharffen Berger, E. Guittard, Valrhona, and Lindt.

To dip truffles in dark chocolate: 1 ½ pounds of the same chocolate as for the truffles.

To make any of the truffle variations, read the recipe to see what is required (e.g. for Hazelnut Dark Chocolate Truffles, 1 cup hazelnuts to be toasted and ground)

2 1/2 pounds dark milk chocolate (38 to 41% cacao)

Suggested brands:Â Scharffen Berger, E. Guittard, Valrhona

2 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1 lemon – to juice

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Suggested brands: Pernigotti (only available at Williams-Sonoma), Droste, Valrhona, Scharffen Berger

120 (or more) pleated paper candy cups (available at cookware and candy making supply shops)

Adapted from Truffles, Candies, & Confectioner:Â Techniques and Recipes for Candymaking by Carole Bloom, published by Ten Speed Press. Copyright 2004. All Rights Reserved.

Yield:Â 60 1-Inch round truffles
Total chilling time: 4-5 hours

Ingredients
1 pound dark milk chocolate (38 to 41% cacao), finely chopped
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
6 tablespoons water
2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 cup heavy whipping cream
3 to 4 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 1/2 pounds dark milk chocolate, finely chopped, to be tempered

Place the chopped chocolate into a 2 quart mixing bowl.

In a 2 quart heavy saucepan combine the sugar, water, and lemon juice. Cover the pan, bring to the boil, and boil for 2 minutes. Remove the cover and continue to cook the mixture, without stirring, until it turns deep amber.
At the same time, heat the cream to a boil in a 1 quart saucepan. Remove the pot of caramel from the heat and pour in the cream. Be very careful as the mixture will bubble and foam vigorously. Return to the heat and stir with a long handle heat-resistant spatula or wooden spoon until completely smooth, about 1 minute.
Strain the mixture into the chopped chocolate. Let the mixture stand for one minute, then stir together until thoroughly blended with a rubber spatula, whisk, or immersion blender. Cover the mixture, let cool to room temperature, and chill in the refrigerator until thick but not stiff (2 to 3 hours).

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment or waxed paper. Use a small ice cream scoop (1-inch diameter) to scoop out 1-inch mounds. Or fit a 12-inch pastry bag with a large, plain round pastry tip with a ½-inch opening and fill partway with the truffle cream. Holding the pastry bag 1 inch above the paper, pipe out mounds about 1 inch in diameter. Cover the mounds with plastic wrap and chill in the freezer for 2 hours or 6 hours in the refrigerator.

Dust your hands with cocoa powder and roll the mounds into balls. These will be the truffle centers. Cover and chill the centers for another 1 to 2 hours in the refrigerator.

Remove the truffle centers from the refrigerator and bring to room temperature so the outer coating won’t crack when they are dipped. Line 2 more baking sheets with parchment paper. Melt and temper the 1 1/2 pounds chocolate (see recipe for Quick Tempering Method for Chocolate).

Place a truffle center into the tempered chocolate, coating it completely. With a dipper or fork remove the center from the chocolate, carefully shake off the excess chocolate, and turn out onto the parchment paper. After dipping 4 truffles, dust the top of each truffle lightly with cocoa powder.

Let the truffles set at room temperature or chill them in the refrigerator for 10 to 15 minutes. When the truffles are set place them in paper candy cups.

In a tightly covered container wrapped in several layers of aluminum foil, they will keep for 1 month in the refrigerator or 2 months in the freezer. The truffles are best served at room temperature.

Variations
Caramel Milk Chocolate Toasted Almond Truffles
Stir 1 cup finely chopped toasted almonds into the truffle cream before it cools. Sprinkle the top of each truffle with finely chopped toasted almonds.

Caramel Milk Chocolate Hazelnut Truffles
Stir 1 cup finely ground toasted hazelnuts into the truffle cream before it cools. Sprinkle the top of each truffle with finely ground, toasted hazelnuts.

Salted Caramel Truffles
Add 1 teaspoon Fleur de Sel or other fine sea salt to the truffle cream after adding the caramel mixture. After dipping the truffles, sprinkle the top of each truffle with a pinch of Fleur de Sel or other fine sea salt before the chocolate sets up.