Holiday fixings without all the fuss
By Katie Humphrey
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF, Monday, December 25, 2006
Jeff Corff uses a pitcher, not a spoon, when he scoops up pureed carrots and squash.
And anything left inside the oversized stainless-steel bowl gets scraped out with a spatula that looks more like a small shovel than a kitchen tool.
Corff, a chef at Central Market on North Lamar Boulevard, is making holiday dinners for hundreds of people who purchase premade meals rather than toil in their own kitchens.
"One-hundred and fifty pounds of carrot butternut squash puree," he said, looking at the tub filled with the orange side dish. "That's the volume we deal with."
Demand for prepared food is increasing every year, mostly because buying it is more convenient than preparing a meal at home, said Keith Kemp, who has been a chef at Central Market for 10 years.
Some people purchase only meat or side dishes to complement what they make at home, he said.
The store had more than 800 orders for full or partial meals this year, and the demand for some items has gone up as much as 40 percent since last year, he said.
"It's less stress for them at home, to have the prepared food," Kemp said. "It gives you more family time."
Specialty grocers such as Central Market are not alone in experiencing increased demand for prepared holiday fare. Restaurants including Luby's and PoK-e-Jo's also offer meals for people to take home and reheat.
Over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season, barbecue restaurant PoK-e-Jo's sells 600 to 700 smoked turkeys and hundreds of pounds of potato casserole and gravy, said Jason King, general manager of PoK-e-Jo's in Round Rock. Demand has steadily increased about 10 percent each year, he said.
"People like the simplicity of it, and it's quality food," King said.
After 35 years of cooking Christmas dinner, Austin resident Christine Aubrey, 62, decided that this year she would buy a prepared meal at Central Market to cut down on time spent in the kitchen.
"I have lots of family, four generations, with me, and I'm really trying to simplify the whole traditional dinner," she said.
Making dinner this year entailed placing an order and picking up boxes of premade fare Sunday morning, including oven-roasted turkey, whipped organic garnet sweet potatoes, green beans amandine and a pumpkin chiffon pie.
All she has to do is reheat the items in the two hours before dinner.
But behind the easy take-home instructions are four 24-hour days of preparation by professional chefs in the Central Market kitchen.
Armed with order projections, they adjusted recipes and started stirring, chopping, roasting and mixing Thursday.
On Friday night, a team of 14 chefs led by Corff and Kemp ticked items off the list: 140 chicken pot pies, 400 pounds of green beans, 700 pounds of giblet gravy, 800 pounds of cranberries.
The workload doesn't seem to faze the chefs as they move from one dish to another in the stainless-steel kitchen.
"It gets bigger and bigger, but we get better at it each year," Kemp said.
Everything must be made fresh and immediately cooled to about 40 degrees before being moved to a large walk-in refrigerator and packed according to order specifications. By the time customers pick up their meals, they are neatly sorted and stacked inside a refrigerated truck at the loading dock.
"We look forward to it every year because it's a challenge," Kemp said. "It's like we're invited into people's homes to help them enjoy the holiday."
