By around 9 a.m., Amaral is working on a menu for a special group of clients. He may order flank steak for them or perhaps whole free-range chickens that will be prepared with garlic and lemon. He knows some won't like it--they probably would prefer pizza or a hamburger--but he knows they'll appreciate it later.

Amaral is the chef at EMQ Children & Family Services, the Campbell-based provider of children's mental health and social services. The agency helps more than 5,600 children and their families each year with community-based and residential treatment, as well as support and educational services.

Amaral cooks lunches for the EMQ staff, as well as for events EMQ caters, but he also prepares meal plans for the 40 children in the residential programs.

With dishes such as chicken cordon bleu, Amaral is hardly preparing typical institutional meals.

"They eat well," Amaral says. "The kids really have a nice menu, and we're really proud because we give them fruit three times a day, seven days a week, and absolutely no desserts, and they finally have become adjusted to it. They're leery in the beginning, but then they like it."

Amaral is conscious about using only the healthiest ingredients--nonfat milk, unsalted butter, kosher salt--and refining the children's tastes with desserts such as strawberries with honey.

"It is unusual for a place like ours," says Roberto Favela, the EMQ division director and Amaral's boss. "When I hired him, I said we don't want institutional cooking, and he said he wouldn't want to do that."

Favela says that when employees of similar county agencies come to EMQ for a meal, they immediately notice the difference.

Amaral has become "innovative" in the way he prepares his meals, Favela says.

Amaral says that he never meets the children because of EMQ's strict rules of confidentiality. When he prepares special diets for children, whether to curb obesity or to comply with strict dietary needs, he has only their initials for identification.

Still, Amaral finds ways to ensure that he serves the children food they will grow to like.

"He's very conscientious on how to find out things," Favela says. "When our driver goes to pick up the dishes, part of their job is to look at what the kids eat and what they throw away."

"If you ask them about it, they say they like tasty chicken and desserts, but that's not all we can serve," he adds.

Though about half the children in EMQ's residential programs go home with their families during the weekend, 20 to 25 are typically still there, Favela says, so Amaral is responsible for weekend meals.

The nutritional requirements extend beyond Amaral's kitchen.

The chef keeps detailed records of the personalized diets he prepares for some children. Once the child leaves the residential program, those records can be handed over to the child's therapist.

Preparing meals for overweight children is more of a challenge than anything else is, Amaral says.

"Some of these kids go to school and have two sandwiches, and then they come home and get weighed, and they just lie about it," he says. "They'll go home for the weekend and come back with a big sack of McDonald's fries that their parents bought-- then I'm starting them on a diet Monday through Friday, so you have that to contend with too."

"Some of them quit after two weeks, but I've got two that I'm proud of," he adds. "I put them on certain diets, and they've each lost 30 pounds with exercise."

Preparing quality meals for the EMQ staff is equally important, Amaral says.

"Nowadays most people throw a pizza in the oven or go to Safeway and stop at the deli, so we offer some nice choices," he says.

Amaral and his staff will serve anywhere from 40 to about 80 people per meal, depending on how many EMQ staffers decide to stay for lunch. The care and effort Amaral puts into his meals keeps people coming back. He is known for many of his dishes, such as his savory asparagus.

"I sauté them and I almost burn them with a little olive oil and salt and pepper," he says. "It's very woodsy--it's clean, and it's very different."

Amaral describes how he braises all six vegetables separately when he makes chicken cacciatore, so all the flavors come out. Or how he makes such unique soups as cauliflower and apple.

"I like to do things they've never had before," he says.

"I like to create and adapt different recipes to my type of thinking," he says. "I want it fresh and simple. Simplicity is beautiful in my mind."

Lisa Davis, the clinical director for residential and school-based therapy, says having a quality chef at EMQ is a good retention tool for the workforce.

"It's way more than just being fed, it's about providing a family atmosphere," she says. "By being able to share these meals every day, there's a lot of socializing."

The EMQ staff especially comes together during the holidays, when Amaral and his staff prepare huge banquets. This Thanksgiving, they cooked more than 18 turkeys for about 230 people. For Christmas, Amaral and his staff will prepare 80 to 100 dozen tamales and make their own quiches and Portuguese doughnuts, all from scratch.

On top of the meals he cooks for EMQ staff and clients, Amaral is in charge of catering events held at EMQ, such as Rotary luncheons.

"They do a wonderful job," says Gary Arita, the Campbell-San Jose West Rotary sergeant of arms. "I didn't expect them to have a place to eat that was so good."

Amaral avoids the temptation to eat all day with what he calls the "taste and spit method."

"I learned that in culinary school," he says. "You see an overweight chef, you know there's a problem there. He's eating all his food."

Journalist to Chef

Amaral has been with EMQ for seven years. Prior to that he was a consultant for Foothill College, and previous to that, he owned a restaurant. Before he owned the restaurant, he was a journalist.

As a sports editor for the Fremont News Register years ago, Amaral traveled around the country covering everything from college sports to Super Bowls. He found the lifestyle wasn't for him.

"I enjoyed traveling around the country and eating at fine restaurants, and food was always in the back of my mind," he says.

He and his wife opened a deli in Fremont, which soon turned into a successful restaurant, The Alps. He attended a culinary academy for six months but dropped out, figuring he would learn more from experience.

"I went in like a blind man, but it was fun," Amaral says. "I'd get up at five in the morning and just create, experiment and steal recipes and adapt my own philosophies and flavors. I like real clean, refreshing food, and that's how I started."

A year later, the restaurant expanded its hours to serve breakfast on weekends. Soon it was serving 600 to 800 breakfasts on Sundays, and people were coming from as far as Santa Cruz to dine there. There were 24 styles of omelets and six styles of pancakes, as well as mimosas and strawberry and banana daiquiris.

"You don't see that anymore, only on special occasions, and that's no fun," Amaral says.

After five years in the restaurant business, the hectic lifestyle began to take its toll.

"One Mother's Day we ended up serving 832 guest tables," Amaral recalls. "At 4 a.m. my chef walks in with a bottle of beer in his hand and half in the bag, and said, 'I want a raise.' Two hours later I gave him one out the door. I grabbed two waiters that were grill cooks at one time, and the three of us did the cooking."

Even when days went by without a hitch, it was tiring. Amaral worked 15 hours, seven days a week. He wouldn't have kept it up if he hadn't loved it, he says.

After closing the business, Amaral did some restaurant consulting throughout California and soon landed at Foothill College.

"I tore up their whole menu," he says.

He instituted a salad bar with 100 fresh items that was replenished daily and added a 14-stool coffee bar on campus.

"It was a great way for students to meet in the morning," he says. "We were making more money than two Starbucks downtown."

During his eight years at Foothill, Amaral served such celebrities as Jesse Jackson and the first President Bush, and he also developed a reputation of his own.

He says a food broker once visited the college to rate its food and had only praise for Amaral's work. She told him Foothill had the second-best college food in the state, second only to UCLA, which has long been reputed to have the best college food in California.

"I was very proud of that," he says.

As for the future, Amaral knows exactly where he wants to be--in the foothills of the Sierra. He and his wife have a retirement home there.

"When I retire, I'm going to go work at the casino," Amaral says. "It has nine restaurants, and I've been promised a job when I move there. I live a mile from the casino, I like to gamble, but you can't work and gamble there, so that's great, it eliminates gambling, and I don't have to worry about ordering, or anything but just cooking."