Learning From Chef Cassidy K: Catering Moss Brunch
Contributed by: Albert Barillas
I am a student-athlete at Jessup University, looking to start my own private chef business in the future. With that, I searched for a sort of mentor to show the ins and outs of the business. I found Chef Cassidy on social media, contacted her, and we came to an agreement to do a mentorship. I am now in my mentorship with Chef Cassidy, prepping, cooking, and cleaning alongside her learning what it takes to be a private chef.
Today I met Chef Cassidy for a brunch service at Moss Venice. The service today was hosted by Creating Fowards Studio x Citron Labs x I Have This Friend Co. Cassidy curated the menu today to be healthy, light, and nourishing to fuel a day of business workshopping and networking. Cassidy was inspired to create the menu in that way by the event space used “Moss Venice” which was designed with many interior plants and centered around wellness.
At the brunch service the menu was all vegan, so started by setting up a build-your-own raw vegan wrap station with collard greens as the wrap and had items such as red pepper hummus, broccoli microgreens, living wheatgrass, alfalfa and clover sprouts, flax seeds, Persian cucumbers, radish, shredded rainbow carrots, Cilantro and lime, red cabbage, and seeded crackers. The wrap station was paired with some seasonal summer fruits such as apricots, peaches, ripe cherries, plums, and pluots. The main dish today was the Kitchari, an Ayurvedic dish often eaten to aid in digestion along with cleansing/detoxifying and balancing the body. The Kitchari is made with basmati rice, moong dal, cumin, fennel, mustard seeds, coriander bloomed in coconut oil, whole ginger and turmeric, and Maldon salt.
After the brunch service, we met back at her place so she could teach me how to make Kitchari. We started by soaking basmati rice and moong dol in water for 15-30 minutes which makes them both easier to digest. Then as the basmati rice and moong dol soaked in water, we took butter and cooked it on low to make the milk solids form at the top for us to scoop the “white foam” out. After the ghee finished we then took our basmati rice and moong dol and started cooking them in a large pot with a generous amount of water and turned it on to boil for 30 minutes. We then turned to chop our turmeric and ginger chunks in half to throw in the pot as it boiled. As the pot boiled, we bloomed all the necessary spices with the ghee in a small pot, the spices used were mustard seeds, cumin seeds, fennel seeds, and coriander. Then we threw all the bloomed spices into the large pot to finish cooking to the desired consistency.
