Tuesday work food
I was away from the office all day last Tuesday – I had to attend a training course. It was fully catered (morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea), so I didn’t need to worry about lunch that day. But I did make Jac some sandwiches for her lunch.
This is what I made for her:
- Satay chicken (leftover from the weekend) with cos lettuce and aioli
- Roasted turkey breast with mashed avocado, cranberry and blueberry preserve and lettuce
- Curried egg and lettuce
- Swiss cheese, leftover roasted potato, red onion and seeded mustard
For the curried egg mix: I’d boiled an egg the night before so that it would be ready for me to use in the morning. I mashed the egg with a fork in a bowl and added curry powder to taste. I added just a touch of mayonnaise to the mixture to add a bit of moisture so it would stick better to the bread. Jac said her favourite sandwich out of this selection was the one with the Swiss cheese, leftover roasted potato, red onion and seeded mustard. :)
I hadn’t planned to take photos of my lunch at the training course. I’d been expecting typical training course food – you know, sandwiches and fruit, that sort of thing. But I was so impressed with what we were served that I loaded up my plate, pretended I had to check my mobile phone for messages, then crept back into the training room where I secretly photographed my food.
I mean, look at this! The prawn cocktail was delicious, with cold cooked perfectly bursty prawns cut into bite-sized pieces (presumably to make them go further, but they really was very easy to eat that way!). There were fresh rice paper rolls, chicken ones and vegetable ones, served with soy dipping sauce. No prizes for guessing which of the two varieties I picked! It was filled with chicken and rice noodles and garnished with a fresh mint leaf which gave it a lovely fresh flavour. There was a good selection of little sandwiches – ham, hard-boiled egg, tuna, cheese and so on, I chose an egg one first. I went back later for seconds and ate a couple of tuna sandwiches too. The crumbed golden-brown item you see on the right is a vegetable croquette – they were filled with curried potato and served warm with a tomato dipping sauce. Everything was pretty yummy.
And there was dessert too! Little tart shells filled with this gorgeously light whipped sweetened cream with berries twirled through (I found strawberries and blueberries in mine). The tarts were drizzled with a sweet berry coulis and garnished with a slice of fresh strawberry. The tartlets kind of disintegrated as soon as you bit into them and quickly became finger-sucking (and, if there had been no witnesses, plate-licking) good food.
Pretty cool for training course food, eh? Morning tea had been pretty good too – mini danishes with different fillings: custard, blackberry jam, apricot jam and so on, served warm. Biting into that warm flaky pastry was so immensely pleasurable (though a little messy!). But they really outdid themselves with lunch. I wish I’d thought to sneak out and photograph the food all laid out on the tables before we were actually summoned to lunch. It really did look quite spectacular all spread out, but by the time I discovered this the hungry hoards were getting ready to pounce, and I wasn’t about to jump in with my camera at that point. Next time I go to a catered training course I’ll have to be a little more strategic. :) Afternoon tea consisted of a selection of biscuits – cookies, shortbreads, melting moments and so on. It’s amazing how hungry you get from thinking.