US Embassy Visit

A few days ago the staff members of AEWA (American Embassy Welfare Association) asked me if we could put together a quick meal at the US Embassy to celebrate St. Patricks day.  I took the challenge of course and said yes.  They gave me a recipe for Irish Stew, Corn Beef Sandwiches and Irish Cake.  You have to remember where I live now.... I said yes and had no idea if I could even get Corn Beef here in Kuwait!  

I gave the recipe to my Chef and asked him to source all the ingredients to prepare this.  He had to ask for an explanation on what 4 of the ingredients were and had never cooked any Irish meals in his life.  He is also born and raised from India.  He then showed me a sample of the Corn Beef in a can that was minced and I started to get worried!  We had the purchasing teams make some calls and yes, we sourced the real corn beef to be able to serve 150 people two days later.  We also sourced all the ingredients needed for Irish Stew and the Irish Cake.  The one thing we now needed was Guinness Irish Beer which of course the US Embassy has!

The team worked last night until 1:30am cooking all the bread, preparing all the meat, cooking the stew without the beer in it as we had to wait to get to the Embassy to then heat & reduce the beer to add it to the stew.  They then delivered the product today to the Embassy during yet another sand storm day and set up outside with a Irish Band to serve the guest.  I bought green shirts for the staff so that they fit in for St. Patties!  Food service started at about 5:30pm and ended at 9:00pm.  

I met so many great people from the US and made some new friends at the same time.  2 of the families actually live within walking distance of my place close by!  The band members had a high percentage of Filipinos in the group and they actually sounded great!  Played a lot of music I knew very well (Skynard and lots of old southern rock).  During the night I met 5 soldiers whom had not been around trees or food other than MRE's for about 5 months.  We did them special and picked out 5 Ribeye's for the grill and it felt so good taking care of them knowing in reality they take care of all of us.  We served about 140 guest overall and it was a success.  So proud of my team tonight for going the extra mile so fast and it was so great making new friends; I look forward to more visits!