Saturday, August 15, 2009

Made From Scratch


MADE FROM SCRATCH...

This is a defining feature for the YamDaisy Cafe: the Food Project that looks to Neighbourhood Cafes that provide delicious Home Style meals. Nearly everyone needs such a cafe, and they need it to be good! And surely you would agree that the best food is made from scratch.

It is this that sets the YD Cafe apart from other low cost options and will give the customer better tasting and more nutritious food. No warmed up frozen food, no generic tins of things, no cheap cheese grated a week ago.

This is fantastic for the customers and allows people with specific dietary needs to eat there with confidence, and families who want to give their children the best food, to have the pleasure of food made from scratch they don't always have to make themselves.

But what about the chef! What about the work!

Ha! This is the whole point of the YamDaisy Cafe. We have a professional, energetic, healthy, committed cook (or two) to do all the work! Hooray!

Ofcourse, we don't want them to be burnt out! But since they are feeding a whole community (over 100 meals a day!) we will make sure they have great basic equipment, especially machines! lots of suppport, and a menu and workplace designed to make things easy. Not to mention those fresh, local, seasonal ingredients!

This is why we have the simple daily menu of only 4 dishes for the chef to make each day (soup, 2 mains and a fruit dessert).

Here is the question though.... where do we draw the line! Surely we must let the chef use preserved tomatoes! Do we expect her/him to make all their own bread? Can't they use prepared puff pastry?

For now let us say that the use of prepared food will be kept at a minimun. A minimum even smaller that the home cook generally uses. A teeny tiny minimum.

Because at YamDaisy Cafe's - they cook from SCRATCH!

5 comments:

  1. Sounds good! food cooked from scratch is always much much nicer.

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  2. Thanks Sam, there is no getting around it, is there!

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  3. That's what I love most about the YamDaisy cafes. 'Real' food.
    I wish there was one nearby!

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  4. This is an interesting question. I have no problem with canned tomatoes - I shudder to think what my winter meals would be like without them!

    I tend to think that making your own puff pastry is only for the crazy. Maybe if something is too labour intensive to make from scratch but the purchased alternative isn't seen as a good option, dishes using that ingredient should just be avoided?

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  5. I do agree Hilary. Tomatoes is the main one I would need to use preserved, and pastry can be easy to make. The whole idea of YamDaisy is to have homestyle food and let the other restaurants do the fancy stuff.
    Thanks for contributing!

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