Prepping; the labour of love.

The week leading up to the beer dinners is all about planning and prepping. This time around we had a 7 course beer tasting planned, but for some reason it was not as time consuming as we had imagined. We all did our parts and with strategic planning and the right sourcing things went very smoothly. There were still all those late nights and all day prepping involved, but that goes without saying. Here's a glimpse of it.

Beautiful organic plum tomatoes ready to be broiled for one of the many ingredients in the chilpachol soup.

Our beloved cazuela, which always comes in handy. Here is the base to the chilpachol, which includes roasted tomatoes, onions, jalapeños, chipotle, garlic, peppercorns, cinnamon sticks, and toasted tortillas.

Halibut for the fish fumét that would eventually end up bathing the top of the salt cod ravioli. Thanks to Tommy at Catalina Seafood whom happily let us go in and grab what we needed. We called so many restaurants and fish purveyors without luck. They either didn't have any fish bones or wanted to sell them to us at a crazy price.

Towels and silverware awaiting the moment they can savor the food.

Chopping away at the chocolate for the earl grey tartlets.

Eden farms organic Berkshire pork belly in cubes, or as Kevin called it "porkhenge"!

Jackie's station as she rolled up the Vietnamese egg rolls.

Handmade chocolate snap cookie crust. Needless to say much of the crust was being munched on as these pictures were being taken.

Let the kneading begin. The girls kneaded the pasta for the ravioli. Thank you!!!

Accurately hand-making ravioli and stuffing it with the salt cod.

Pasta for days. At this point we were all exhausted and a little after 1:30 am we ended up finishing the 120 raviolis and the rest of the prep. We had a little next day planning session and off to bed we went.