Garde Manger Recipes

I taught garde manger for years at the CIA... it was one of my favorite classes. I love caviar, foie gras, preparing hors d' oeuvres, decorative platters and especially forcemeats. And yes... I love making watermelon carvings too!

One of the many recipes new culinary students learn to prepare is duxelle. It's a delicious mixture of sweated shallots, garlic, minced mushrooms/stems, herbs, seasoning and often cream. It's cooked to almost a paste like consistency. Duxelle can be used to stuff chicken breasts or veal chops, vegetables and I especially like shiitake duxelle stuffed mushroom caps.

My absolute favorite phyllo dish is Pastilla, a rustic, pastry type dish of shredded chicken, almonds, Ras El Hanout etc.. wrapped in a very simple, flaky phyllo dough made with flour and water.

Galantine of Chicken Winter time is perfect for practicing (and eating) terrines, pates, galantines, etc… The photo (top left) is prepared by pounding the breast and wrapping it around the forcemeat. The photo underneath is a galantine with a whole breast. (the chicken galantine style in this recipe)

A classic! One of my earlier cooking jobs was at on a boat serving high end continental cuisine... old school. We made clams oreganata and clams casino. I was the pantry cook & opened a lot of fresh clams in those days!

I made this crab strudel for a fun, virtual cooking class Junnie & I did for the Research Chefs Association. I love the sweet crab and crunchy water chestnuts in the filling.

There is a restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico called Cafe Pasquale. I was inspired to create salsa recipes after reading their wonderful cookbook. I had the chance to visit Cafe Pasquale with my son Ciro & we enjoyed an amazing meal of delicious, Southwest foods together.

This is probably the most advanced recipe in my blog, it's one of my favorites because I made it during the Charcuterie portion of the CMC exam.