Culinary Delight meets TECHNOLOGY
HAVE YOU ever thought of how a hotel provides food for thousands of guests each day while maintaining its quality and flavour profile? They do not cook each menu item every day. What they do is cook in large quantities ahead of time, rapidly chill the food to a temperature that doesn’t promote bacterial growth, and reheat when it’s serving time, all using smart commercial kitchen equipment from CookSmart Equipment and Supplies Limited. CookSmart has over 30 years of combined experience specialising in food service equipment and supplies. They offer smart kitchen solutions that save on time, money and energy to professional chefs who run kitchens in hotels, institutions and restaurants catering to large numbers.
COOKING
Toni-Ann Roberts-Martin, corporate chef at CookSmart, decided to demonstrate how these hightech but user-friendly equipment work by preparing an array of delicious dishes – fried chicken, jerked chicken, baked plantains, deconstructed escoveitched fish, curried goat, rice and peas, and topped off with yummy banana muffins.
“I decided to prepare local dishes because Jamaicans tend to be a bit sceptical about smart devices, especially when it comes to their food. As a people, we want to know that we can still experience and savour the flavours we have grown to love and appreciate when we sit down for a meal,” said Martin with a chuckle. As each food item was prepared, cooked and presented, it was hard to not be amazed that one single piece of equipment could so efficiently and perfectly cook chicken, goat meat, fish, baked plantain – and let’s not forget, dessert!
Each item was an absolute delight; each piece of meat as tender and flavourful as your grandma’s cooking from her country kitchen. When Roberts-Martin plated each dish, one could not help but remember one’s first experience of being served in a gourmet restaurant.
THE EQUIPMENT
Peter Buckley, director of CookSmart, walked into the kitchen with a grand smile, ready to dish out additional and important information.
“In the food service industry, the challenges of time management, food wastage and product consistency are of great concern. Our equipment offers solutions in these areas. For example, when cooking rice and peas in our Rational SelfCookingCenter, there will be no rice burnt and left as in the bottom of a pot. It saves money, and helps in time management with smart options, such as overnight cooking,” Buckley said.
Buckley went on to explain that each piece of equipment is self-cleaning, so long hours spent washing pots becomes a thing of the past in the modern-day kitchen.
A modern-day kitchen is supposed to make work light but still maintain all the qualities you loved when you decided to become a chef. CookSmart will equip your kitchen with a Rational Oven, which can be used for every food process except frying. If you need to fry, worry not, they will install a Giles Automatic Fryer. If catering for large groups and cooking days in advance is a must, the Irinox Blast Chiller has got your back. CookSmart also understands that as Jamaicans, marinated meat is an obvious preferred choice, and the Henkelman Vacuum Sealer is a no-brainer. Lastly, when all is said and done and it’s time to clean up, the Winterhalter Dishwasher will ensure that no one can tell what you cooked last evening.