Here's what's great about the American barbecue
MILLIE: Plan-ning barbecue parties can be fun. As a teenager, I remember my Mom once organized a poolside wiener roast for me. It’s a wonderful theme for poolside or garden parties for all ages and any occasion.
A week ago, we were tapped to cater a unique and interesting event, The Great American Barbecue, in honor of the new American Ambassador Harry K. Thomas Jr. Attending the barbecue were around 250 guests from the diplomatic circle, hoteliers and restaurateurs, importers, distributors and suppliers, all of whom are trading partners of the US agricultural industry in the Philippines.
It was not the first time we catered such an important event but this time, there were too many details that required special attention, such as securing NBI clearances for the entire catering crew. Since close coordination with the organizers was crucial, I assigned only the best of my staff and on top of the project was my GM, Myrna Virtudes, and my gem of a daughter, Karla. I was confident that Karla could handle it because aside from being a graduate of De La Salle University-Manila BS Business Management, major in Entrepreneurship, she also has a diploma in Professional Events Management. Recently, Karla attended a masteral event management course under Prof. Joe Goldblatt of Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, and that’s on top of her culinary exposure at the French Culinary Institute of New York! In fact, it was a big load off my chest that she could communicate directly with the organizers and I was so proud that she successfully pulled it through. Karla was surprisingly calm and very well-organized. What impressed me most was her ability to plan, command and orchestrate the whole affair without any hitches.
My only role was to add the finishing touches and approve everything Karla had planned or laid out to do before the final presentation to the client. That and tasting the menu, which was the fun part!
KARLA: The event had so many challenges that would pop up as we went along. First was that, of course, we would have to use ingredients from the US. I was in contact with the US Meat Export Federation, Raisin Administrative Committee, California Milk Advisory Board and US Potato Board. I had to build the menu around US beef, pork, frozen potatoes, and California raisins and cheeses. Building the menu was actually pretty easy but since time was restricted, I had to pass my suggestions on to the client even without testing it or even without a recipe on hand and just worried about it after. Once approved, that’s when we started to experiment. We had ordered far more ingredients than we even needed for the event, and used some for trial. That was the fun part. I felt like I was just playing around in the kitchen, plus I got to eat with the chefs after, and that’s why they love product development, too.
Once everything was ready for the event, the next part was fitting everything into the budget. Since these were new items on our list, it would have taken us longer to do the trial, do the costing and then submit our suggested menu to the client. So we took a risk and did it the other way around. We gave the client the menu to figure out what they liked and didn’t like, made a couple of revisions and when it was finalized, we started doing the trials and then the costing. Aside from this we still had to deal with NBI clearances, electrical restrictions and the fact that this was an outdoor event and the possibility of rain was increasing as we neared the allotted time. But thank God it didn’t rain because even if we had a contingency of tents on standby, the whole barbecue event and on-the-spot grilling would have been ruined.
MILLIE: It was an all-barbecue affair on a different level. It wasn’t the usual skewered pork and chicken barbecue sold on the streets. I thought of asking my brother Raymund, the grill master par excellence, to help out on this project. It proved to be a wise decision as Raymund had spent endless hours on research, choosing the right spices, taste-testing and training the production team on how to barbecue the correct way with his tools, timers and various paraphernalia. Raymund prepared a beer-can chicken formula with the right Cajun-inspired spices. Guest chef Jay McCarthy of Catskill Place Restaurant Company in Colorado shared a recipe for his Cowboy Rub, which we had used for the char-grilled Cajun rib-eye steaks, and Raymund had to master it to perfection. He used about six different types of barbecue grillers — some gas-fired, others using special charcoal briquettes and some with built-in smoke chambers, all US-made, of course. He even had special names for his barbecue grillers. Ha!
KARLA: The menu basically made use of all-US products to reintroduce them to the market, knowing that all these ingredients are readily available in the Philippines. For example, we used Plaza’s formulation to cure US Angus beef brisket for corned beef and US pork for baked Virginia ham and smoked loin of pork. As guests arrived, we had waiters in cowboy outfits — all except for the boots, holster and gun — carrying a bar tray filled with either welcome drinks or pass-around finger foods, which included California cheddar fingers with salsa, potato balls with California cheese filling and tomato basil salsa, trio of California cheese canapés, and California cheddar and raisin paté with crostini.
We had two kinds of salads, cole slaw salad with California raisins and Dixie salad with apples, baby corn and California raisins, which by the way was really, really good and refreshing.
Then came the barbecues. I had divided them into four grilling stations so that every station had an attraction being grilled on the spot and, as mentioned by mom, the grilling was overseen by my uncle, Raymund Reyes of Ski Ray BBQ & Grill. He had several sessions for product development with the chefs as well, and practice on how to use his top-of-the-line grillers. We had grilled seafood and vegetable skewers, Cajun beer-can chicken, smoked US pork loin with honey and California raisin glaze, US pork sausages, char-grilled US rib-eye steaks and all-American mini cheese burgers and the usual sidings of baked beans and corn on the cob.
The next station was the fry station, where the US Potato Board set up their fryers and served five cuts of frozen potatoes. We had the Twister Loop, Zesty, wedges, Natural Crisp and the Basket Weave, accompanied by Gutsy Garlic, sweet mustard, wasabi mayo and Horsey Radish, The Plaza’s signature dips and salad dressings, which we sell in 350-ml bottles as sauces for The Plaza premium baked ham as well. We also had a mac-’n’-cheese station, which was ultimately my favorite station. We showcased different California cheeses like Monterey Jack, provolone, smoked cheese, sharp cheddar, and gave the guests the freedom to choose the kind of cheese or combination of cheeses they wanted in their mac-’n’-cheese. Most times, when I order mac-’n’-cheese in a restaurant, they give us the usual macaroni with cheese sauce or something close to Cheez Whiz, which is not how I like my mac-’n’-cheese. Our mac-’n’-cheese was the cheesiest ever! And it was good! We also had some carvery items like the baked Virginia ham with sesame buns glazed with honey and California raisins, and mini US Angus beef Reubens on California raisin bread bites.
But that’s not all: we still had desserts like California raisin cheesecake, cheese brownie bites, bite-size cinnamon rolls with walnuts, California apple and raisin turnover, and my favorite and newest creation, banana and California raisin mini-muffins.
All in all, the event was very successful; we had guests who came over and mingled, enjoyed the food and drinks, and even dressed up as cowboys. Welcome to the Philippines, Ambassador Thomas!
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Special thanks to Ramona Singian of the Foreign Agricultural Service-US Department of Agriculture, Sabrina Yin of the US Meat Export Federation, Siew Keat Chuah of the Raisin Administrative Committee, and Reji Retugal of Synergy Asia-California Milk Advisory Board and US Potato Board.
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Send e-mail to milliereyes.foodforthought@gmail.com and karla@swizzlemobilebar.com. Find us on Facebook: Food for Thought by Millie & Karla Reyes.
