Paul Elledge

Ingredients that you will need to make this Scrumptious Recipe:

48 corn thin tortillas, preferably homemade, but you can surely use your favorite tortillas

 1 Pound of tomatillos, this is about 8 medium tomatillos. (Husk, rinsed and cut in half)

 6 cloves of peeled garlic

 4 hot green chiles (to taste) – this is about 2-3 serrano’s or 1-2 jalapenos. (remove stems and chop roughly)

 ½ cup loosely packed cilantro, cutting off lower stems before chopping.

 2 large avocados, pitted, scoop out flesh from avocado and roughly chop it up

 ½ cup water

 Salt – to taste

 Remaining ingredients that you will need:

  2 Pounds of fresh chorizo, casings removed

 12 ounces of fresh Mexican cheese, Queso Fresco, Feta or other salted dry-pressed farmer’s cheese, crumbled up into pieces

 ½ cup fresh rendered, room temperature pork lard or vegetable oil

Directions:

If you are using fresh made tortillas and they are moist feeling, lay them out in a single layer and cover them with a dish cloth. You need them to feel dry and leathery so they will crisp up on the grill.

First make the avocado sauce. In a small non-stick skillet, over a medium heat, place tomatillos cut side down and garlic. Brown each side of the tomatillos (it should take about 3-4 minutes for each side to brown). When finished tomatillos should be completely soft.

Put tomatillos and garlic into a blender or food processor until they’re room temperature. Now, add chiles, cilantro and avocado. Blend until well-smooth. Pour this mixture into a dish for serving salsa, to get the consistency that you need drizzle with water, it usually takes about one cup of water to get the right consistency.

In a medium skillet over medium heat cook chorizo. If the chorizo is clumping break clumps up and cook until well browned. This usually takes about 12 minutes. Now, place chorizo on a paper plate or paper towel so the fat can drain off. At this point, crumble cheese up in a small bowl.

Turn on a grill to medium heat or if you are using a charcoal grill let the charcoal burn down so the heat is at a medium temperature. Grill tostados until they are crispy. This should only take a few minutes. Now, brush each tostado with oil or lard, then put a tablespoon of chorizo on each one, when chorizo is hot and tostados are completely crispy remove from grill and place on modern stylish medium square bamboo leaf plate (these plates are great for serving tacos). Sprinkle with cheese and drizzle with avocado sauce.

Here is a tip for this recipe: If you don’t have a grill, you could crisp up and cook your tostados in an oven instead of on a grill.

This recipe is an definitely an all-star recipe to use when featuring a taco or tostada buffet to your customers or guests. Special Thanks to Rick Bayless and the Delish Team for posting this recipe.

Paul Elledge

Here are the ingredients that you will need:

Sauce ingredients:

2 lbs. Of tomatoes or you can substitute 3 cans of fire-roasted tomatoes in place of raw tomatoes.

 2 small onions slice about ¼ inch thick

 6 peeled cloves of garlic, peeled and cut into halves

 2 Tbsp. of garlic or vegetable oil

 4 Tbsp. of balsamic or sweet sherry vinegar

 4 Tbsp. Of brown sugar

 ½ cup of hot sauce (preferably Tamazula, but any mexican hot sauce will do just fine.)

 Salt

 The rest of ingredients you will need are:

  24 ounces of medium sized shrimp, cooked, peeled and deveined

 2 small avocado (pitted, scoop flesh out from the skin and cut it into about ½ inch cubes)

 6 Tbsp. Of cilantro, chopped.

Directions:

Put tomatoes on a thin sized baking sheet, place the tomatoes under a broiler (about four inches from the broiler itself), then roast until the tomatoes are soft, blackened and contain blisters. Remove from broiler and set them aside to cool down. While you wait for the tomatoes to cool, preheat your oven to 425 degrees F. and put onion and garlic on another baking sheet, drizzling them with oil. Toss the onions and garlic with the oil until well coated. Now, roast the onion and garlic until they are nicely browned. Stirring them several times during roasting them. This should take about 15 minutes. Now, tomatoes should be cool enough so take off the skin on each tomato.

Put your tomatoes into a food processor, pulse them until they are chopped into small pieces. Place them into a large bowl. Don’t wash the food processor and put the garlic and onions in it, then pulse them until chopped coarsely. Now, add the onions and garlic to the tomatoes, stir in vinegar, brown sugar and hot sauce. It is now time to taste, add salt if needed.

If you like your shrimp cold simply put it in the refrigerator to cool, then add shrimp, avocado and cilantro together with sauce.  Now, serve up your recipe in fabulous Bamboo Coupelle dishes and enjoy. Special thanks to Delish, specifically Rick Bayless for sharing this recipe.

Chicago-based, chef-focused ecommerce start-up Restaurantware.com started three years ago with a line of biodegradable and recyclable tableware, Fashion for Food™.  Now, Restaurantware manufacturers and distributes over 500 different disposable dishes, a line of porcelain smallware, select pastry focused food items.  New for Spring 2013, Restaurantware is proud to announce it is now offering a full line of chef clothing, Fashion for Chefs. After establishing themselves as the leading supplier of catering products, the co-founder of Restaurantware, Jalila Bouchareb, saw this as a natural transition, “Not only do we want to provide chef’s with a great way to present their culinary creations, but we also want the chefs to look and feel great too.” The line is comprised of chef jackets, pants, aprons, and headwear, in a wide variety colors and sizes. The full line can be purchased online at www.restaurantware.com.

The line of chef apparel is all encompassing, with everything from a traditionally crisp white jacket and checkered black and white pants to fun prints and more modern cuts, chefs are sure to find something they like and that can be tailored to their event.  Each piece will be sold separately starting at $9, so mixing and matching tops and bottoms is encouraged.  Chefs can dress for specific holidays and even color coordinate with their staff – sous chefs, servers, and bartenders. And perhaps the most adorable part of it all is that it all comes in children’s sizes as well, so they are perfect for children’s birthday parties and cooking classes.

All of the following categories are currently available for purchase at Restaurantware.com:

Restaurantware is rapidly growing and its presence is known by chefs in all realms of the food and beverage industry – five-star hotels, hip restaurants, and casinos as well as with caterers and wedding planners. With the addition of chef apparel, Restaurantware is moving closer to a one-stop shop for everyone’s entertaining needs and supplies. Restaurantware’s current line of disposable and reusable tableware includes small plates for amuse bouche, verrines for desserts, shot glasses for shooters and a full collection of bamboo plates, boats and skewers for eco-conscious consumers.  Restaurantware manufactures and distributes the largest selection of disposable tableware in North America and has established itself as a leader in the disposables industry as a result of its innovative, accessible and easy-to-use smallware.

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Don’t fret, though. In place of harmful Styrofoam tableware is eco-friendly and safe bamboo tableware. Restuarantware offers sheath bamboo, which comes from shoots of bamboo. The raw bamboo product starts out growing and as it grows the sheath covering of the new growth slowly falls off thus allowing us to use it to create amazingly durable tableware products such as bamboo boats, plates and bowls just to name a few. In addition, this type of bamboo tableware is safe for you to use when serving food to your family and friends.

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Let’s just say, Styrofoam products should be pushed aside and from here on out we all will be using safe and heavy-duty bamboo products. It is the best choice for all of us to make when we consider the benefits that we will get from using it.

Let’s start by talking about cost. We all know that money is tight for a lot of people so it is just logical to scale back on some features when it comes to a wedding reception. Of course, nobody wants to appear cheap or feel like they are missing out on important elements at their wedding. This is why using disposable tableware comes in handy. Modern day disposable tableware is high quality and cost effective. It allows people to save money, while getting the quality tableware that they desire.

Now, let’s talk about style. Most of the time when a person gets married they have a theme or style in mind for their tableware and decorating items. Thankfully, the disposable tableware that is offered by Restaurantware showcases a classy style. In addition, there is a variety of different designs that you can choose from so finding high quality sophisticated tableware is easy to handle.

Lastly, let’s talk about clean-up. As far as I know there is not one caterer who wants to spend hours cleaning up any type of event, including wedding receptions. Most of us just want to clean-up quickly and go on with our personal life. Thankfully, if we use disposable tableware clean-up is a cinch. This is possibly the best reason to use disposable tableware, at least in my eyes.

It was nice talking with you about disposable tableware and wedding receptions. I hope you see that this type of tableware can truly be a god-send to caterers.

You can find disposable tableware that has the quality of most china and cutlery. This means that in this day and age you can easily find super durable disposable tableware thus allowing you to feel confident that your tableware won’t break when you serve a meal.  You will never need to worry about your client’s tableware products breaking when you buy the heavy-duty disposable tableware that is offered at Restaurantware, which means disposable tableware can easily be part of even upscale catering events.

The look of disposable tableware is sensational. It can be bought in different colors like elegant seagreen, gleaming white and sharp-looking black. There are so many beautiful stylish disposable tableware pieces on the market that can definitely stand right next to classic catering china. In addition, the designs of disposable tableware is superb thus incorporating it into a wedding or upscale event is a fabulous idea.

There is a bunch of reasons why a caterer should use disposable tableware even at their upscale catering events so you should truly give it a shot. You will be able to reap the rewards that come from using disposable tableware while still featuring your food on high quality and very lovely tableware products.

First of all, disposable tableware comes in an amazing array of colors, styles and designs. It is easy to find plates, bowls, cups, trays and cutlery that will match any type of theme or party scheme. This means that your life will be easier because you will not have to spend hours searching for the right type of china. We all know that sometimes finding regular dishes that match perfectly in some type of themed parties can be difficult thus disposable tableware can certainly make your life easier.

The second reason why you should take advantage of disposable tableware is that it makes cleaning up much less stressful. None of us caterers want to spend hours doing dishes and cleaning up after we have just performed at a catering event so disposable tableware certainly makes our life easier.

Lastly, disposable tableware is cost-effective. This means that as a new caterer or even a professional one you can save some of your hard-earned money when you use disposable tableware. This is wonderful since we all know that money is tight for many people, nowadays.

Hopefully, just by reading these three reasons why you should take advantage of disposable tableware at your next catering event you will be able to make your life less stressful thus get through your event effortlessly. Hope you have a great time catering.

A yummy potato casserole perfect for Mardi Gras.

Yummy Cajun Potato Casserole

Ingredients:

12 Large Potatoes

1 Cup of Butter

2 Cups of freshly grated Parmesan Cheese

½ Cup of Bacon Bits

Salt

Pepper

12 Green Onions – green part only

2 Cups of medium sized, raw Shrimp

2 Cups of Crawfish

Cajun Seasoning

Garlic

Directions:

Cook potatoes by baking, boiling or micro-waving them. Now, leaving skins on potatoes cut them in half and arrange them in a large casserole dish. Press them down with a fork.

Spread butter over the potatoes. Put bacon bits, salt and pepper over the potatoes. Devein and peel crawfish and shrimp. Now, sauté the shrimp and crawfish in a large skillet with butter, Cajun seasoning and garlic. Add your shrimp mixture in the casserole dish where the potatoes and bacon bits are waiting. Sprinkle cheese and Cajun seasoning over the top of the casserole. Bake until the casserole is hot and the cheese is melted. Top with green onions. Serve.

This yummy potato casserole is a great side dish that you can serve any time of the year, especially at a Mardi Gras feast. The fact is all the ingredients of this casserole scream Mardi Gras and go very nicely together. Hope you enjoy it.

Your guests will love this fabulous okra.

Fabulous Roasted Okra

Ingredients:

36 fresh okra pods – sliced about 1/3 inch thick

2 Tablespoons of Olive Oil

4 Tablespoons of Kosher Salt

4 Tablespoons of Pepper

Directions:

First, preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Next, put okra slices on a foil lined cookie sheet. You might have to use two cookie sheets because you need to put your okra slices in a single layer. Drizzle the okra with olive oil. Now, sprinkle it with salt and pepper. Bake it in oven for about 10-15 minutes.

This is okra recipe is sure to excite all your guests who attend your party. You have nothing to lose, go ahead, kick your okra up a notch by serving this fabulous okra dish.

You definitely should serve these amazing Collard Greens.

Amazing Bacon Collard Greens:

Ingredients:

4 Pounds of Collard Greens

8 slices of thick bacon – chopped

2 cups of sweet onions –chopped

10 cups reduced sodium chicken broth

2 cups of sun-dried tomatoes – chopped, make sure these aren’t packed in oil

1 teaspoon of garlic powder

½ teaspoon of salt

½ teaspoon of red pepper flakes

Directions:

Trim the thick stems of the collard greens. Coarsely chop the collard green leaves. In a Dutch Oven, sauté bacon for about 3 minutes, add onion and cook for about another 8-9 minutes until the onions are tender and bacon is crispy. Now, add the greens and cook until they’re wilted.

Stir in the remaining ingredients and bring everything to a boil. Reduce heat, simmer for 45-50 minutes until greens are tender.

This is a very easy side dish to make for a Mardi Gras festivity. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have in the past.