Beyond Hospital Food

You don’t usually think of going to a hospital for the food.

Then again, you don’t usually think of hospital cooks coming up with such delicacies as Wild Mushroom and Spinach Stratta.

That’s the dish that made David Strasser, the chef at Spokane’s Holy Family Hospital, one of 10 winners nationwide in this year’s Campbell Soup Golden Ladle Recipe Contest for institutional cooking.

Strasser, a former California country club chef, and his staff serve 1,000 or more meals each day to Holy Family patients and to employees and visitors at the hospital’s Take Five cafe.

He loves it.

“I feel needed,” says Strasser, an ample, amiable man. “I feel a lot of people need what I do.”

Strasser, who turns 42 on Thursday, grew up on the New Jersey side of the New York City metropolitan area. He became interesting in cooking at an early age, thanks in large part to the ethnic specialties of his Swiss and Syrian grandmothers, and worked in restaurants as a teen.

“I always found it fascinating,” Strasser says. “It was a job I could go to and the time would go by very, very quickly.”

He went to Rutgers University to play football, but soon realized his dreams of making the pros were just that - dreams. So Strasser decided to make cooking a career, attending the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. He wanted to travel, and figured a CIA diploma would help him get in the door anywhere.

Travel he did, switching coasts to take a job in San Francisco. It was a palate-provoking experience. For example, along with the traditional red sauce, he encountered pastas paired with vegetables and seafood.

“I had never seen abalone before,” Strasser says.

After starting out at a seafood house, Strasser soon settled in as the chef at a 1,500-member country club in Oakland. The experience, he says, has proved invaluable.

“Working at a country club, you have to be good at a lot of different things,” he says. “Members are always requesting that you do something a little different … you’re in the library a lot, reading cookbooks.”

But Strasser started feeling burned out after almost 15 years on the job. When he heard that Marriott food service was looking for executive chefs, he put in an application.

Along with new challenges, the corporate schedule held a certain appeal. “I’d never had evenings off, weekends off,” he says. “I thought that might be real fine.”

Strasser’s first assignments were at a couple of Bay Area hospitals. Then, when Marriott took over the Holy Family contract, he came to Spokane in November 1992 on what was supposed to be a temporary assignment, to get things started. He never left.

Strasser likes the people he works for, and the people who work for him. And he respects their dedication to the customers they serve.

“There are tremendous challenges in feeding patients,” Strasser says. “It’s by far the most difficult thing in my career.

“For those on restricted diets, he says, it’s the first time in their lives they’re away from fat and salt. Usually the food doesn’t taste good to them, no matter what you do to it. It’s extremely important that it looks good, that hot food is kept hot and cold food is kept cold.”

Even patients on general diets can get bored with the standard five-day menu cycle. Those who are around for a while are allowed to order off the more extensive cafe menu. Strasser also handles special requests, from organic produce to ethnic preparations.

“They’re not here having a ball,” he says. “If there’s something reasonable I can get for them, I get it.”

Most of the meals Strasser and his staff prepare are served at the Take Five, a bright basement space. Along with hospital employees and visitors, the clientele includes area business people and senior citizens who live nearby.

“People who’ve had family members (hospitalized) here will come back for the food,” Strasser says proudly.

The cafe features such entrees as Thai curry chicken with rice, grilled eggplant pizza and Cajun honey roast pork, all typically $3 or less.

Strasser’s catering menus, for medically related meetings and events - including the annual Tour de Lacs bicycle ride, which benefits the Holy Family Foundation - can be even more elaborate.

But he saves his strongest creative impulses for recipe contests, where he’s learned that uniqueness counts.

It’s getting harder all the time. “I’ll sit here and think of something, and a couple of weeks later, I’ll see it in a magazine,” Strasser says.

He’s had his successes. Along with the Campbell’s contest, Strasser won an Oreo contest with a biscotti recipe that included Oreos in the dough - in essence, a cookie-filled cookie.

Strasser enters contests as a hobby, in his spare time - which, unlike his country club days, now includes evenings and weekends.

“Instead of gearing up for the weekend,” Strasser smiles, “we gear down.”

Wild Mushroom and Spinach Stratta

A scaled-down version of the recipe that won second place in Campbell Foodservice’s 1996-97 Golden Ladle Recipe Contest.

3 (10- by 13-inch) sheets frozen puff pastry

1 pound spinach

4 ounces (8 tablespoons) margarine

1 medium onion, minced

1/2 medium red bell pepper, diced small

1 tablespoon minced garlic

8 ounces oyster mushrooms, sliced

8 ounces domestic mushrooms, sliced

8 ounces shiitake mushrooms, sliced

1/4 cup cooking sherry

2 (10.75-ounce) cans Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup

1/8 teaspoon white pepper

8 ounces Cheddar cheese, shredded

1 egg, beaten, mixed with 1 tablespoon water

Mushroom sauce (recipe follows)

Thaw puff pastry sheets and prebake two of them, according to package directions.

Blanch spinach quickly in boiling water and plunge in ice water to cool; drain well.

In a saucepan, saute onions, red pepper, garlic and mushrooms in magarine over high heat, until until mushrooms are tender and liquid is almost evaporated. Add sherry and cook until liquid is slightly reduced. Lower heat and add soup, spinach and white pepper; mix well and cook until thoroughly heated through.

Lightly spray a 10- by 13-inch baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Lay 1 prebaked pastry sheet in bottom of dish. Spread with 1/3 of mushroom mixture and top with of cheese. Top with 1/2 second prebaked pastry sheet, repeat mushroom and cheese layers and top with final 1/3 of mushroom mixture.

With a sharp knife, lightly score unbaked pastry sheet into 12 sections and place over final layer of mushroom mixture. Brush lightly with egg mixture. Bake at 375 degrees until hot and golden brown, about 30 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool 20 minutes. Cut into portions along the score marks, and serve topped with mushroom sauce.

Yield: 12 servings.

Nutrition information per serving (without sauce): 312 calories, 20 grams fat (58 percent fat calories), 10 grams protein, 26 grams carbohydrate, 37 milligrams cholesterol, 482 milligrams sodium.

Mushroom Sauce

1 (10.75-ounce) can Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup

3 tablespoons cooking sherry

1/2 soup can (5 to 6 ounces) half-and-half

2 green onions, sliced

Place soup and sherry in saucepot. Cook over medium heat and gradually add half-and-half, stirring frequently, until hot but not boiling (185 degrees). Add green onions before serving.

Yield: 12 servings.

Nutrition information per serving: 40 calories, 2.7 grams fat (61 percent fat calories), 1 gram protein, 2 grams carbohydrate, 3 milligrams cholesterol, 95 milligrams sodium.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: Chef du Jour is a monthly feature of IN Food that profiles area chefs and provides one of their recipes for readers to try at home.