NEW! PERSONAL CHEF SERVICES! CHEF LAUREN MCELROY! NEW!

I'll Cook!

My passion is FOOD and I love to share my passion with as many as possible.

Events of any size: single meals, family dinners, corporate events, weddings and everything in between.

My specialty is designing Customizable Menus:

• Dietary restrictions
• Personal food preferences
• Freshness / seasonality
• Food allergies
• Or simply using up those leftover ingredients in your pantry 
  
  I'm here to help!

SERVICES:

• Family-style breakfasts, lunch and/or dinners
• Weekly meals - including personal meal planning, shopping and clean up
• Corporate meals - boxed lunch or family-style hot/cold platters
• Private parties - rehearsal dinners, showers, receptions, retreats, reunions, apres, cocktail parties, etc. - I can even help you plan!
• Open Houses
• Drop-off delivery
• Tell me what you need, and I'll work with you to attain it!

MENUS:
My Recipe Index.can give you some ideas or, let me know what you had in mind and we can build the ultimate, satisfactory meal, appetizer or event of any cuisine, restrictions, additions, etc.

 

AREAS OF SERVICE:
Vail, Beaver Creek, Eagle-Vail, Avon, Edwards, Minturn, Wolcott, Eagle, Gypsum - Colorado
Contact me for other areas of service.

 

CONTACT:
Chef Lauren McElroy
214-206-7865
laurenmc123@gmail.com

http://newamericanfoods.com/pages/chef.html

 

The Week in Pictures

Here is a review of my past week in pictures - my weeks tend to really begin and end on Wednesdays so that really marks my weeks with Friday's typically always being the busiest.

Last Thursday, they told me to make a lobster bisque to use as a sauce for some Hog snapper we had on special. I created a basic recipe using fresh lobster claw meat, mirepoix, tarragon, heavy cream, leftover white wine, lobster stock & a few other spices and herbs. Blended it with half the meat then topped the final product with the rest of the chunks (pic at left).

I was asked, several times this week - because I'm awesome at organizing - to reorganize the walk-in cooler. This entails: emptying boxes of produce into plastic containers, switching out old trays that hold product with clean, new ones, sorting through expired or moldy dairy items and produce, combining all like-items in the same area, making sure my pantry section isn't overflowing with unessesary items, making sure everything is covered, nothing on the floor, etc (pic at right -->).

New dessert specials to learn to plate according to the Pastry Chef: Chocolate torte with berries and ganache (pic at left), Poached Pears over a shortbread cookie floating in a cinnamon papaya soup w molasses cookies, an A
Appletini (deconstructed apple pie in a short martini glass), Chocolate Frau Frau (pic at right) layers of chocolate mousse, orange marmalade, cake served with a lemon and chocolate sauce & mandarin orange segments, Trio of Seasonal Truffles, and the dreaded Caramelized Banana pudding tart (dreaded BC it took like 10 mins to assemble!), that no one ordered. Yesterday's new special that replaced Banana was a Grand Marnier Sabayon with cinnamon chocolate and raspberry (pic at lower left, in the window).
<--







My special salad for the week was a Strawberry & Feta salad over baby greens (arugula and spinach), topped with slivered almonds and edible flowers and a drizzle of strawberry-sherry vinaigrette -->

 
Amuse bouches:
<-- Roasted red beet and pine nut-goat cheese with micro greens

Black garlic aioli fingerling potato salad with a black pepper cracker

Kimchi & red pepper dressed seafood salad on a thinly sliced radish (pic at right) 
 -->


<-- And last night's hot Butternut squash and roasted pear soup with yogurt creme fraiche and chives


So concludes my week of pictures. Stay tuned until next week!

First Day as Pantry Cook

Yesterday was officially my first day as Pantry Cook (salads and plating desserts) at my new job / externship.

They trained me through all of their newest salads and cold appetizers such as shrimp cocktail (new and old plating styles) as well as let me take the reigns (on my first day!) to create the amuse bouche for dinner! I was able to choose from anything in the fridge and found some nice chunks of lobster claw meat (already out of the claw) that I was able to make into a lobster salad crudites:

I poached the lobster claw meat in clarified butter until tender, with just a little bit of fresh black pepper. Then chopped up scallions and piquillo red peppers with the cooked lobster meat and a little bit of the leftover lobster butter, added a squeeze of lemon juice and just enough Japanese-style mayonnaise until the consistency was perfectly creamy. For the crudites, I cut out circles of kalamata-olive ciabatta and crisped them in the oven with a little bit of olive oil. On a small square plate, I placed olive bread chip on bottom and served with about 2 tsp of the chilled lobster salad, topped with pea shoots and other micro-greens for color, some plates also got a sprinkle of paprika for added color; and voila! My first Amuse Bouche at my new job!!

My trainer also went through a few of the lunch meals that sometimes get ordered after the lunch crew leaves that we (the dinner crew) have to man until 3. Next, he showed me a quick overview of the salad courses, cold seafood appetizers, cold soups and the dessert plates.

One we looked at was the new shrimp cocktail -->
which included yuzu lemon poached giant shrimps, cucumber slices, red pepper aioli sauce and hearts of palm soaked in beet juice (which turned them purple). pretty!

<--The most popular salad was the Salad Panche with heirloom yellow tomato slices, mixed greens, cinnamon and sugar roasted pears, sprouted peas, special cheese and pear vinaigrette with fried leeks (not shown). This was super tasty.

More later - I need to go to work! ha.