Every year CUESA (Center for Urban Education for Sustainable Agriculture) at the San Francisco Ferry Building has a wonderful fund raiser called Sunday Supper. Many Bay Area chefs cook for this dinner. There are wines, beers and cocktails and finger foods at the opening reception on the main floor of the Ferry Building. Then the guests go upstairs where they are seated at long family style tables and a group of chefs cooks for each section of 50 guests.
Over the years I have been a chef at the reception, and a guest at the event. This year I worked with Chef Staffan Terje of Perbacco and Chef Mourad Lahlou of Aziza to help plate their delicious food. Staffan and staff prepared a marinated duck breast, a sausage stuffed into the duck neck, sauerkraut mashed potatoes and cherry mostarda. Yum! My job was to sprinkle on the duck cracklings( and not to eat too many of them myself)
Mourad cooked his famous Moroccan spiced lamb shank, vegetables and fluffy couscous. The guests really had two great dishes to savor. All of the other dishes prepared by the chefs looked great and we cooks managed to snag some primo tastes from the leftovers.
I have decided that I’d rather work the event than be a guest. It is so much more fun to be with the chefs. Now that I do not have my own restaurant, I miss the comraderie of working with my peers. I loved being with the chefs as they plated the food, chatted, gossiped, tasted, and sipped beer from a donated keg.
Later that evening they had the auction. I had donated a dinner for eight in my home and guess who bought the dinner? Umberto Gibin who owns Perbacco. This time Staffan can help me out! It will be such fun to cook with him again.
Joyce Goldstein 