Bloody good soup

I don't talk about Dan as much as the kids, but I liked this story from the kitchen trenches that he told me last night.

He has a cook working for him, who has made progress in the past year, but was high on Dan's list of useless cooks when he first started at the restaurant. The big problem was that he insisted on making the special soup, often ignoring Dan's instructions and branching off to try something "creative". It rarely went well. Dan's talked to him in the past about it, and is encouraging his interest in pastry, but the soup issue reared it's head again last night.

Dan went in at lunchtime, and found that the soup of the day was Roasted Carrot and Apple. Ummmm. That really doesn't sound that great to me, but even if I did want to give it a try, it shouldn't be served on a spring day. Especially not the first day we'd had sun and sixty degree weather. Plus, he'd worked on it for over two hours. The customer response ranged from "I didn't not like it" to "Gawdawful".

Dan knew he couldn't serve it at Dinner too. But he was so busy with prep work, that it was after six before he could give another thought to soup. And glancing around the storeroom, there wasn't much available to use. Except for one thing. The bar had accidently gotten a case of Bloody Mary mix. Dan added some heavy cream, stirred in some goat cheese, and had a soup done in three minutes that the customers raved about all night.