Simply Garde Manger with Chef Jacq

Making Money or Impressing Guests with Food served cold or Garde Manger.

“To invite a person to your house is to take charge of his happiness as long as he be beneath your roof.”
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Can you get a hundred and twenty five dollars out of a regular four portion size chicken you cook and serve as a hot entrée? Unless you marinate the chicken in some aged collector’s brandy and serve it sprinkled with truffles du Perigord flown in from France, the answer is probably no. Even though, the cost of your meal will be high. You will still have to cook a starch, two vegetables, and a sauce. At possibly twelve dollars a plate, you will get, at most, less then fifty dollars. But in Garde Manger you can more than double that amount for the same chicken.

Deboned, cut up, seasoned and processed in a food processor with a little cream and egg white, it becomes a mousseline. After testing and tasting a small amount, you adjust the seasoning, fold in a garnish of a little diced ham and whole emended pistachio, then wrap the mixture into the chicken’s own skin. Wrap it in plastic film and aluminum foil and poach it fully submerged until it reaches an internal temperature of 165 ⃘⃘ F. Chill it overnight, and you turned this very common yard bird into a delicious galantine. A few slices of it served cold with a little Cumberland sauce made of red currant jelly and orange juice and zest with a little Port wine, make a succulent cold appetizer. From this chicken galantine, one can produce ten appetizer size serving; at twelve dollars per servings, I will let you do the math. You can even do better with a duck or pheasant galantine prepared in the same fashion.
Can you turn a six dollar a pound whole salmon into a product that sells for thirty-four dollar a pound? In Garde Manger you can. Fillet your salmon and keep the skin on. Cure in a mixture of salt, sugar, crushed black pepper and fresh dill and turn your salmon into a thirty-four dollar a pound delicacy called Gravlax. For safety measures it is recommended to wrap it in plastic food wrap and then butcher paper or wax paper and freeze your cured salmon solid for a week to kill any present parasite. Then pull it out and thaw it out in the refrigerator. Slice it thin while it is still semi frozen.
Image tag: 016-SalmonSpread_8984.tif
Image label: Fresh Atlantic salmon filet

Can you get four to six dollars for a bite sized canapé or mignonette served at a reception? In Garde Manger and in the right establishment you can. Sushis, also assembled in Garde Manger are a great source of revenues, and the list goes on. Of course, if you do not sale your labor of love Garde Manger style, you will get serious accolades from your guests. You will save yourself a bundle creating your own Garde Manger delicacies while impressing your guests.
Back in the food industry, you will be hard pressed in the hot food arena to come up with such profit margins, yet time after time many items in Garde Manger can yield a decent bottom line.
More ways to improve that bottom line
How to be effective in both product (food cost) and time (labor cost). How “less” is often “more”.
Do not try to put so much food on a cold appetizer plate turning it into an entrée or lunch or dinner meal. You want to encourage your patrons to order a few dishes. Smaller portions are often a sign of quality too. It is often perceived as a sign of better quality and that more expensive ingredients are being used, especially in fine dining establishments. There, most patrons do not come to the restaurant to gorge themselves. We better leave this task to the “all you can eat” buffets out there.
How and when to streamline a recipe
I am often amazed how many recipes out there are complicated to execute. Sometimes even the step by step procedures do not make much sense and could be simplified for a more efficient result. My recommendation is to first try to do the recipes as indicated in small amounts (generally one time the yield of that recipe), write some notes as you proceed, and some suggestions of what you might want to do to improve the procedure and outcome. This is very important for students; you cannot begin to make changes to a recipe before understanding the full procedures and desired outcome. However, feel free to question your instructor on how and why a certain procedure is being used as opposed to trying something you feel might work better. I always appreciate a student or employee who demonstrates critical thinking skills.
How to properly and safely scale recipes
To scale a formula, always write it down on paper first. Do the math and have someone check it to make sure it is right. Do like carpenters do: measure twice and cut only once! Never multiply or divide a recipe one item at a time in your head as you go. This is the best way to make mistakes. One error is all it takes to ruin an otherwise perfect and delicious outcome. In most recipes in Garde Manger, just as in Bake shop and Pastry work, you cannot fix a mistake once the item had been mixed and baked or cooked. Also, beware of conversions. You cannot convert dry measurement from weight to liquid ounces measurement. This is only possible for liquid with the density of water where this British saying “A pint’s a pound the world around” is a fun but valid reminder of the conversion rate for liquid only.