Pictures

The last couple of months or so we have been busy little bees.  Large community events, winery events, and now we are knee deep in weddings.  May and June are the busiest time of the year.  For which we are thankful.  Here are some photos to give you a sense of what we have been up to.  Cheers.

Brian and I cooking a whole pig, and whole chickens for the Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival board members party. 

Grilled Walla Walla Sweets.  Brilliant with romesco sauce.

An appetizer for Shannon's Wedding at Three Rivers Winery.  Skewered sea scallop, pancetta, and caramelized apple.  Delicious.

Copper River Sockeye searing on our brand new flat top grill.  Then slow roasted at low heat and served with aioli and lemon.

I love vegetarians.  This stuffed portabella mushroom dish is at the top of my list to serve and eat.  Perfectly sauteed zuchinni, red pepper, red onion, roast whole garlic cloves, basil, cubed mozz, headed to the oven till just warmed through. 

Hmmm... Whole roasted brined chickens carved for service or individual frozen chicken breasts?  Hmmm....

This is what a bowl of quinoa salad looks like for 200 guests.

Prime Rib.  Day three.  In four hours it will be consumed. 

Those little red bits, piquillo peppers from Spain.  The prosciutto is from Parma, Italy.  The asparagus is from Walla Walla, Washington.  Three of the finer things in life assembled here every Spring.

 This is what we do on our Sundays. 

Cheers

Palmares

Palmares is a cycling term which means a list of great accomplishments.  Here is our palmares, a letter from Shannon's wedding reception at Three Rivers Winery for 215 guests.  We served grilled top sirloin roasts and copper river salmon, grilled ww sweets and asparagus, and beautiful salad greens from our friends at Welcome Table Farm.  It was a beautiful day, a great venue, and a fun time.
Hi Graze,

This whole wedding process. I have been thoroughly impressed by you and Graze---my millions of emails and questions were always answered completely and quickly. We have received many many compliments about the food. I only wished I could have had seconds---the meal was absolutely perfect.

I'd love to know how to write a review for you, as would my mom. She's a total foodie and thought our wedding food was some of the best she's had, as did many of our guests. Take care and thank you again for an absolutely amazing job that was above and beyond our expectations...

We will definitely be back to Walla Walla and hope to meet you sometime.  Thank you for helping make our wedding day all that we hoped for.

Take care,

Shannon Leacj

Cheers!!!

Spring Release Walla Walla

Two Days, over 2,000 guests, seven wineries... yes we are tired. 

I went to Longshadows for an evening release event Friday Night.  Beef tenderloin mini sandwiches, warm potato salad, piquillo pepper wrapped walla walla asparagus, french green lentil salad, red wine beef ragu and grilled bread, endive boats with goat cheese mousse, and shrimp and arrabiatta crostinis.  The food was pretty dang good.

Here is a shot of the marinated beef tenderloin.  When the french winemaker dude compliments the beef, the green lentils, and the truffled creme fraiche... you know things went fairly well.

Brian spent three days at Leonetti grilling Lostine Beef, serving grilled asparagus, and frying corn and spanish chorizo fritters with saffron aioli.  Friday night was a special release party, and we made tartare with the Lostine top sirloin cut.  Wow.  It's not fair that a generic cut like top sirloin can be that tender.  Capers, italian parsley, lemon, anchovy, truffle salt, egg yolk, made up the tartare, served with arugula on a lavosh cracker.  

Becca headed off to Reininger where we served up carnitas and hominy in a red chile sauce, mexican basmati rice, grilled veggies, asparagus with smoked paprika and cojita, a green salad. 

Pepperbidge we sent all the salads to go with a bbq themed party.  Tortellini pasta, coleslaw, our roasted pear salad, and fruit salad.

Tracy ran off to events at Five Star Cellars and Robinson Ranch Winery, where we did a italian braised brisket, with our meatballs, italian sausage links all coated in a pancetta mirepoix red wine sauce, baked parmesan polenta and other sides rounded out the meal.

L Ecole served our cream cheese spreads, crostinis and lavosh crackers.  And then Saturday served some nicer small plate apps for 30 lucky private tasters.

And the weather was like this all weekend.  This is a shot from Basel Cellars, where we did Samantha's wedding the weekend before.  Just another reason to visit, get married, spend some down time in Walla Walla.

Cheers



It's Just a Tiny Difference

Other caterers...

Graze Catering...

One of the many reasons you should get married in Walla Walla.  The valley from the windmill farm near Seven Hills Vineyard.

Cheers (we do things right, we make honest food, we like to cook for you)

Tempus Cellars

Joe and Molly opened a tasting room for their brand new tasting room, Tempus Cellars (located near the airport).  Now my guess is they named it "tempus" because it has Latin meaning referring to time.  Which leads me further to guess for the consumer this implies "it takes time to make great wine" kind of a thing.

So when Joe asked about food for a tasting room opening, it seemed more than fitting to slow roast a whole pig in our brand new upgraded pig box.  Because, well, a pig takes a long time to cook. 

Here are some photos.  It was pretty dog gone spanking good. 

The pig box, after a few hours, pig inside resting peacefully.  The grills swing open to allow adding coals.

Asparagus grilling for the buffet table.  No it's not local yet.  But the pig is, we got it from our friends at Blue Valley Meats.

The finished pig, being messily butchered.  The cracklings were fantastic.

The ever so simple buffet, grilled veggies, coleslaw, bread and butter, and pig... lots and lots of pig... which got all eaten up.

Cheers

Longshadows and the Oregon Wine Brotherhood

Last week we went to Longshadow Winery and did a buffet dinner for a group of wine tourists... the Oregon Wine Brotherhood.  Which sounds like a fairly serious group... we were expecting archaic ritual, wine/blood oaths, codes of silence, omerta.  And nothing of the sort happened.  They were a rather fun bunch of folks, lots of wine, good food, and hearty cheer made the evening super pleasant.

Paul Gregutt wine writer gave a talk on the terrior of Walla Walla wines and the wines of Longshadows and Forgeron.  Giles and his wife Marie led tastings for their respective wineries, Longshadows and Forgeron.  And we served the food.  Which is the part we do best.

They had some appetizers in the barrel room, and did some tasting.  See the mushrooms.  Those are our Spanish marinated mushrooms.  They are so yummy.  I could eat them all day long.

Here is a new york strip loin roast.  This picture kind of stinks.  The roast was cooked to the most perfect medium/medium rare.  Tender beyond belief.  And the deep rich brown sauce is bordelaise... a red wine and veal stock reduction.  So good with the big red wines.

Roast cauliflowers, sweet peppers, carrots, and parsnips.  Simple and good.  We also served whole filets of slow roasted salmon and aioli, yukon gold mashed potatoes, a simple green salad, and sauteed asparagus garlic and peppers. 

All in all, it was a pretty nice evening.  The next night we cooked for the same group at Dunham Cellars.  That was pretty tasty too.

Cheers

Coming to a Wedding or Winery Near You

This hulking and barbaric piece of metal is our newly updated pig box.  The fine metal workers at the Walla Walla Farmer's Coop gave our old pig box an update.  

They added:
- an insulated wall
- grills that swing away from the coal bed
- grills that raise over a foot high for slow slow roasting
- a door in the oven
- a rack for the pig to rest on inside
- a thermometer port
- handles that slide out to lift off the coal bed
- and caster wheels (to be added soon)

Imagine this menu for about 150 guests, cooked entirely on site, over and under mesquite charcoal.

- whole pig slow roasted
- grilled summer vegetables
- whole butterflied slow roasted chicken

Add a nice salad, a potato or rice dish of some kind, some more beautiful produce from the valley... and, well, that sounds pretty yummy.

Cheers

L Ecole

We have been out to L Ecole Winery a couple of times this last month.  Once for an industry night.  And the other for a tasting of wines produced from the Seven Hills wine area.  (The tastings are crazy.  Like dozens of wines, from different blocks, made by different winemakers, in different styles.  I didn't partake of the tasting.  It looked super intense.) 

I wish this picture did this dish a bit more justice.  Seared shrimp, on a bed of whole white beans in arrabiatta sauce, on top of a bed of white bean puree, with some roasted sweet peppers, all intended to be scooped up with some wafer thin crostinis.  Super yummy.  As the host of the event said "this tastes like Provence!".  Best compliment ever.

Blue cheese slider burgers on a WW Bread Company hoagie roll... mid assembly. 

And then I came home and thought a quick litte saute of parsnips, onion, red peppers, and asparagus sounded like a good idea.  It was.  Do you like to make little piles of your prepped veggies?  I do.

Cheers

WaterDrop WorkShop

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WaterDrop WorkShop made this sign for us.  It is double sided.  It is pretty radical. 

They have another one all made up for the downtown location.  We now have to figure out how to get it installed properly. 

Cheers

Fast Food

[FUTURE CATERING CLIENTS - WE DO WEDDINGS - APPETIZERS - BUFFETS - WINE DINNERS - ETC. NOT JUST SANDWICHES. SCROLL LOWER TO SEE MORE]

Cheers