Another Visitor

Today I began in the castle, prepping for weddings again. It was more exciting today because it was a VIP wedding – not a huge deal but celebrities I wasn’t familiar with. I could tell it was a VIP wedding (not just from the obvious security on site and magazine photographers around) from the long function sheet and all the interesting requests. For example, the couple had rented a horse and carriage for guests to take rides around the castle, they rented an ice cream truck, they pre-arranged transportation in vehicles with tinted windows for certain guests and suppliers, etc. 

You know it's a big, VIP wedding when the cake is seven tiers

The cook that is usually in charge of the canapés was off today, leaving me solely responsible. Normally I would be fine with this, however, today’s canapés included two I had never made before, and two I had never seen made before. The other cook I was working with, the pastry chef, was not very good at explaining things, as I had learned before. So I went to work, preparing the miniature baked potatoes, only to be told I hadn’t chopped the bacon small enough. Then I went to work on the mini burgers – which turned out just to be frozen, prepared burgers. Sounds easy, but the problem was, they came already made up with cheese and tomato attached on the bun. The bride and groom requested all the burgers have no tomato, and some with no cheese. So I had to thaw the burgers and then scrape the tomatoes off every one of them (125 in total) and scrape the cheese off some of them (how many is some – it wasn’t specified). I thought this was a little ridiculous, I mean I am sure we could have ordered in plain burgers or made our burgers instead of somewhat successfully scraping off toppings. 

I needed to double-check the canapés, but the pastry chef did not have the function sheet. She told me the breakfast chef did. Why he did, I have no idea, as the breakfast chef does not do any of the wedding prep, except sometimes sandwiches for the evening buffet. He wouldn’t let me see it, he was kind of rude and said, “What do you need to know?” I asked about the canapés, and instead of just letting me read the function sheet, he told me, “Oh, they are really easy. Just baked potatoes – with cheese, inn, and bacon – just chop up some bacon and cheese and shallots really fine, yeah? Then the chicken skewers and burgers from the freezer.” I then asked him what time the canapés were to be served, and he told me 4:00.

I finished up the canapés, and another cook came in to help out, and we moved on to peeling asparagus – we have 5000 asparagus to peel for upcoming weddings for a starter salad. Not a fun job, but it needs to be done. At 3:00 I glanced at my watch and decided I would begin to set up for canapés fairly soon, in case guests arrived early. A couple of minutes later, one of the servers came to tell me the church bells were ringing and guests were due to arrive in three minutes. I was confused – but quickly ran upstairs to fire up the oven and get the canapés ready as fast as possible. The head servers seemed kind of mad – demanding canapés NOW. Well, I can’t make canapés heat up any faster, and I cannot serve meat canapés that are not up to temperature. So I got them out as quickly as I could, including a plate for the bride and groom.

Normally, one or two plates are saved for the bride and groom. Usually one at the beginning and one near the end. One of the servers confirmed this for me. A few minutes later, the food manager walks in demanding another plate for the bride and groom. Well, I had a plate ready, but not one with burgers with no cheese, those still needed to be heated. Despite these few glitches, the canapés appeared to have gone over well, and I got the rest of them out quickly, then returned to peeling more asparagus. The bride and groom had four plates of canapés in total. 

Luckily, the wedding service went much more smoothly, and we successfully fed 117 guests. The menu was as follows:

Canapés: Spiced Chicken Kebabs, Miniature Cheddar Burgers, Miniature Baked Potatoes
Starter: Ham and Chicken Vol-au-Vent
Bread: Wheat bread, raisin rolls, sesame seeded rolls, white rolls, caraway rolls, red pepper rolls
Soup:  Potato and Leek
Sorbet: Lemon
Main Course Option #1 - Chicken:  Roast Breast of Local Chicken, Champ Potatoes, Rosemary Jus
Main Course Option #2 – Fish: Grilled Salmon, Salad of Fennel marinated in Lemon, Baby Spinach, Vierge Dressing
Side Dishes: Roast Baby Potatoes, and Roast carrots, onions, parsnip, and turnip.
Dessert: Warm Apple Berry Crumble with Vanilla Ice Cream
Petits Fours Assortment: madeleines, cranberry white fudge, fruit jellies, flaked white chocolate truffles, Belgian dark chocolate truffles. 
Evening Buffet – Bacon Butties, Chip Cones

But the best part of my day of all? I got another visitor today!! My boyfriend arrived and is staying for the month, so I am very happy to have the company!