Naomi's Menu

Naomi has suggested a lovely Summery and (given this is Australia) Christmassy menu for the Yam Daisy Cafe.
So aren't I clever to post it up in Christmas week!

The aim is to give an idea of the sort of meals that will be available at YamDaisy Cafes (when they exist!).

She has filled the 4 Things On The Menu criteria (See Here) as follows:

SOUP: Chicken and Vegetable Soup served with Savoury Scones flavoured with Parmesan Cheese and Herbs. Yum. Say no more!

MAIN 1: Spiral Pasta with Avocado, Ham and Chilli (Pictured).
I made this one so I could take a picture of it ~ and since it was a warm Summer day I made a salad.
It is a beautiful salad with particularly nice ham (thanks to the little Italian Supermarket up the street), cucumber from a friends garden, spring onion and basil from mine.
I charred the chillies over a flame and since my chili sensitive daughter was sharing the salad with me, I limited it's contribution to subtly flavouring the dressing - I added slivers of red bell peppers instead.
I chopped the avocado and spring onion and dressed them while I was preparing the rest, and as soon as the pasta was cooked I dressed it too. It was a very simple dressing (lemon, olive oil, thyme, pepper and a little honey - and a tiny bit of chili) and just enough to bring all the flavours together.
This was a lovely fresh meal in a bowl!

MAIN 2: Roast Chicken with Roasted Potatoes, Pumpkin, Parsnip and Onions and a beautiful Gravy.
Isn't this a favourite!

FRUIT DESSERT: Crepes with Strawberries (pictured also!)
O yes, of course I had to make this one so you could enjoy the picture! I used orange juice in the pancake recipe, very nice! The flavour does come through just enough.
But my real trick, just in case you don't know it, is to prepare the strawberries and sprinkle them with caster sugar (a teaspoon is plenty for a punnet) and sit them in the fridge for a couple of hours.
This gives time for juice to come out of the fruit and turn to syrup as it mixes with the sugar. The flavour is intensified and the strawberries are beautifully shiny.
A little cream and a sprinkle of icing sugar, and there is dessert!

The Great 2009 Comfort Food Poll

I began the Comfort Food Poll after I had been talking about the YamDaisy Cafe idea for a while, and had some feedback that cheap nutritious food would not be attractive to potential customers. It sounded too much like aching jaws and boring vegetables.
Even when I talked about delicious, nutritious, local, seasonal food made from scratch on the premises....
No, said some, people want junk food.
So I came up with the idea of finding out for myself - by asking people what they want to eat when they are hungry and tired.

The Question
"You have had a hard day, you are sick, tired and hungry. The Fabulous Food Fairy says "Sit yourself down and I will make you a lovely comforting meal. What would you like?"

I asked this question in my website, on the Facebook 'Comfort Food' Page, in my Community News Sheets and I asked most people I met.
I did mean to do more publicity, my local newspaper would have published an article for me, but my health has been bad the last few months and so I wasn't able to extend the idea.

However, the 70 or so results were very interesting! I quickly saw that the range was SO wide that one dish could probably not be counted a winner. If I did count it that way, Roast Lamb would be the winner, closely followed by Chicken Soup, Vegetable Soup, Pumpkin Soup, and Macaroni Cheese.
But there were variants within, one chicken soup had noodles, another had vegetables, another had dumplings and so it went.
I have ended up putting them into broad categories which seemed to indicate the favourite types of food better.

1st PLACE:
Delicious Nourishing Soups
2nd PLACE:
Scrumptious bakes including Spanakopita and Macaroni Cheese
3rd PLACE:
Tasty Stews; Curries were a big player here
4th PLACE:
Heart Warming Pasta dishes

I had to work out what to do with pasta bakes, there were a couple of lasagnes as well as another pasta bake, so I counted them in both categories!
There was also a love for potato mash, it appeared as part of a meal over and over again.
Pies were popular, especially from British contributors, and toast soldiers with soft boiled eggs appeared too.

Most of these comfort foods came from Australia, indeed, most came from my local community around Melbourne, and they do show that the sort of comfort meals that people would ask for, are exactly the sort of food that would be served at a YamDaisy Cafe.

Ofcourse we did have someone nominate chocolate! And another would simply want pavlova... but it is truly overwhelming that most people chose delicious nutritious meals.
You can see the contributions on the Comfort Food Facebook Page
And at the Comfort Food page on the YamDaisy Website

What comforting food would you ask the Fabulous Food Fairy to make for you?

PS The Fabulous Food Fairy was drawn by Harper Jones aged 5. Thankyou Harper!

Who would be a Chef at a YamDaisy Cafe?

I am going to do a little series of posts about Chefs at the YamDaisy Cafe.
It is one of the ongoing tensions when I discuss the practicality of getting this structure to work
In this post the question is "Who would want to be a Chef at a YamDaisy Cafe"

"What a Great Start to a Career!"
This was my theory. I imagined a young chef just out of College and excited about putting his/her skills into practice. How better to do this than at the YamDaisy Cafe? A good position with the safety of the franchise structure to support! Maybe we could have a system of mentors? What a great start to a career!
"Joy, you have no idea!" said my chef friend Teri. She patiently explained about young chefs wanting to be where the bright lights are, The kitchens with kudos! The great chefs of the world, The fantastic locations.
So I was a bit nervous about it when I was speaking to someone who helped support Social Trading Initiatives. But he said:

"There is no end of burnt out chefs needing work"
Oops. (he didn't know I was going to quote him here!). And my reaction was: O dear! I think there are a few skills needed here that a burnt out chef might struggle with! The chef is not only cooking, she/he is the community interface. They have to be good with old people, young people, screaming babies, cope with people complaining about the meals, do a bit of teaching, make the place happy and successful. All the things that probably burns out cooks in the first place.

The next person I spoke to was a highly qualified and successful chef who was running a lovely little organic cafe. He had his own theory about what might be attractive at a YamDaisy Cafe:
"Good Hours!"
He had a young family and needed to be able to spend time with them. He knew there are other chefs who have done the long hours, the no-life-but-work, and needed to stop, and find a living that brought an income and time for his family.

And this shed light on the 'Burnt Out' chefs who probably had had enough of the long-hours-no-life too - and quite possibly had recovered and now might be ready to try the YamDaisy challenge!

I have honed the structure to make it workable for a chef who would like to work 10am - 6pm, or as close as possible. And if there are two chefs working together, or a chef and another worker, then surely it can all be covered in a fairly civilised way.

I would love to know what sort of person you think might be a chef at a YamDaisy Cafe!