School days + sushi.

This past week I was on the entree station again at my school's restaurant, Opus Too. I actually got to put a recipe of my own on the menu this week, as the amuse bouche. This was cool for me, as usually the students aren't involved in the decision making for the menu.

Above is part of our kitchen, the window in the background looks out over the valley, so when I go into class, I can catch the beautiful desert sunset over the mountains, and I can see the entire strip throughout the night, it's really breathtaking.

We focus on really classical dishes, above is a Chicken Florentine on risotto primavera with mushroom marsala sauce. This helps us get experience in some of the more traditional dishes and styles of cooking in a learning environment. For dinner we do five courses for $14,95, this covers only the food cost, and it's really a great deal. Occasionally you may have to wait a little longer for the food or there may be service hiccups, but for many students this is their first restaurant experience. We've served Joel Robuchon (very impressive that he took time out of his busy schedule to dine with us) in our restaurant before, not many schools can say that.

Above is my amuse bouche, each person got one spoon with some apple jalapeno marmalade, a lobster fritter, and a touch of herbs in white truffle oil. It went over pretty well, I even had someone ask for the recipe.

Thursday night my brother Alex got into town, and I made us a simple dinner of beef and pork ragu on some homemade pasta I had leftover from earlier. I threw some home made ricotta in there too... but only because I had it lying around.

We had sushi for lunch at Ka, across the street and down the block from my apartment. They have really quality sushi there, and a great all-you-can-eat lunch special for $24.99. They get the same fresh fish as the more expensive places on the strip, but without the insane markup for location.

This was spicy tuna wrapped in nori and rice with cucumber, topped with torched yellowtail, drizzled with citrus ponzu and green onions.

One of my favorites, a tempura lobster roll. So very crunchy and savory, it comes with a creamy sauce as well.

A very spicy roll, shrimp tempura with tuna, yellowtail, jalapenos and sriracha with a citrus sauce.

And eel with avocado and sesame. Delicious! We had more than this, but it get a little obscene when my brother and I go out for sushi, we can really rock a sushi bar.

But this is nothing compared to the place we went to for dinner earlier tonight. Where? You'll just have to wait until my next post!

Ciao!

A new look.

I'm playing with the formatting of this blog a little bit, trying to make it more streamlined and food-centric. What do you think?

This week started out a little bit rocky, there was a rough service at the school's restaurant and I happened to take the brunt of it on entree. But, somehow we pulled through and chef gave me props for holding everything together.

Nothing a warm bath and a bottle of wine couldn't cure.

Alas, I had no time to take pictures of my food, so this is a boring looking blog. I'll leave you with this gem, though:

Someone took this picture of me at the Zeppelin in Orvieto. We were having a big shindig for all the people involved in our professional visits, and I got assigned to salad. It was a bit... easy. A lot of the other students were freaking out about their dishes, so I decided to ham it up with the arugula for fun.

Sometimes I can be silly, but please don't tell anyone. I have a very serious persona I'm trying to present to the world.

Tomorrow, I shall be sure to photograph some food. I will soon (Friday maybe?) have access to a very nice camera which will make everything a bit more spiffy. And... the next few weeks should be awesome (did I mention that I'm going to France on the 25th?) so there will be much entertainment to be had.

Thanks for reading!

Ciao!

Change of plans... why not stay in for dinner?

Bored? Hungry?

Yeah, me too. My Saturday excitement was re-scheduled, so the planned blog will have to happen at a later date. To make it up to you, I'll fix you dinner.

Or at least show you how to make pumpkin risotto with chicken. It's really simple and pretty quick, and it's coming upon Autumn, so you should really be eating more pumpkin. I just happened to stumble onto a jar of pumpkin butter in the back of my cabinet, so I used that because I'm broke. But you could very well use canned pumpkin for this, and it would be really awesome with some roasted fresh pumpkin.

You'll need:

-3/4 cup Arborio rice

-2 boneless, skin-on chicken breasts

-1 medium carrot, diced finely

-1 medium stalk of celery, diced finely

-2-3 medium shallots, minced (you'll want 2 parts shallot to each part carrot or celery)

-a handful of celery leaves (yup)

-1/4 to 1/2 cup pumpkin puree or pumpkin butter, depending on your tastes

-2 1/2 cups chicken stock (if you use boxed, try to find low sodium)

-1 tbsp sweet paprika

-pinch cinnamon

-pinch ground nutmeg

-salt and black pepper to taste (adjust as you go)

-1 bay leaf

-2-3 tablespoons heavy cream

-olive oil (a few tablespoons, maybe- I never measure it)

-1/4 cup hazelnuts, toasted

-Black truffle, a medium one, if you're feeling froggy or happen to have some lying around (I'm one of those kind of people)

Your mise en place. If you have all the stuff ready before hand, this will be way easier.

Season the chicken with salt, black pepper, the sweet paprika, and a smidge of cinnamon on both sides, be slightly more aggressive on the skin side.

Chop your toasted hazelnuts.

About like this will do.

This next part's the crazy part, but trust me. Take the heavy cream...

And whip it to medium peaks. Why? I'll tell you later.

For the risotto; put a couple tablespoons of olive oil into a heavy bottomed pan over medium heat.

When it's nice and hot, but not smoking, toss in your shallots, carrots, and celery. Throw a little tiny pinch of salt in there.

When your shallots start to become transparent, toss the rice in, and cook it briefly until it's an ivory shade.

You'll need to add the chicken stock slowly, this is key to a good risotto. Add it about a 1/4-1/2 cup at a time, and stir it frequently to keep everything smooth. If it starts to boil rapidly, turn the heat down a bit, you just want nice, slow bubbles.

While you're coddling that risotto, you can slice up your truffle. Don't have truffle? Sucks for you! The one above was previously frozen, hence the interior color being lighter than the outside.

You could just use the celery leaves... toss them with a bit of chopped hazelnuts (about 1tbsp-save the rest for the risotto) a hint of salt, olive oil, and black pepper. I put truffle slices in mine.

Don't forget to keep adding stock to your risotto! When each amount of liquid you add is almost fully absorbed, add the next bit. Please don't burn it.

About 15 minutes in, you can start the chicken, with a splash of olive oil, skin side down, over medium-high heat. Just let it chill like that for a bit...

Add some pumpkin to the risotto. I ended up throwing about 1/4 cup of pumpkin butter in there, but feel free to adjust the amount to your preference. Keep adding stock.

When the chicken skin is super brown and oh-so-crispy, you can flip it to cook through, 165 Fahrenheit is what you're shooting for. if it sticks to the pan, let it be for another minute, this means it's not fully crisped yet.

Test the risotto. All the liquid should be added, and it should be soft but not mushy to the tooth. It should like like the above photo... time to toss in the rest of the chopped hazelnuts and truffles.

Is your chicken done? Good. Turn the heat off the risotto, toss in that whipped heavy cream, give it a swirl. The risotto should be pourable- smooth, creamy goodness. Adjust the salt and pepper, hit it with a pinch of nutmeg and plate it up!

Serve it with your crispy- skinned chicken breast and that celery leaf salad for some color. Enjoy some hearty, filling fall fare.

Ciao!

Labor day weekend, I knew thee well.

On Saturday, my brother, Kristine, their friend Russ and I went bowling at Red Rock, inside the casino.

Yeah, in case you weren't aware, any activity you could possibly dream of engaging in can be found within Las Vegas casinos. And usually the facilities are pretty swank. This bowling alley just so happens to have giant projection screens and glowing lights everywhere, and Kona Longboard Lager on tap. Beer makes bowling much more fun.

I am not a bowling champion. I enjoy using the gutters a lot, as they seem to keep the ball rolling in a perfectly straight line, and that's the whole point, right?

Kristine (my brother Alex's wife) however, is a very good bowler. She makes up for my brother's and my lack of skills. Her score's in the middle there, Alex and I tied on the second game. Ahhh, more beer, please!

We had to end the weekend with a bang, so on Sunday we went to Burger Bar, Top Chef Masters' alum Hubert Keller's burger joint in Mandalay Bay. They grind their own beef in-house, and use premium ingredients. It's a great place to get something simple, like an American Kobe beef burger with foie gras, truffles, and lobster tail. They also have a great beer list, and alcoholic milkshakes!

I kept it simple this time, a sustainably-raised natural beef patty, with blue cheese, peppered bacon (they have at least 3 different kinds of bacon to choose from), caramelized onions, and home-made Dijon-style mustard, with a side of sweet potato fries.

All in all, an excellent weekend was had by all.

For now, back to the workaday grind of Las Vegas. I shall attempt to post again quite soon, and I should have interesting activities to report on next Saturday, but I'll let that be a surprise.

Ciao!!

After a long hiatus...

Today is a special day, as it marks my triumphant return to blogging.

I slacked off on this project for a while, and recently started hearing complaints about my work stoppage. I assumed that no one would really care about what happens in boring old Las Vegas, but lo and behold, the requests kept coming, so the only logical course of action was to again keep tabs on my daily grind via electronic media.

So without further ado:

This past week was restaurant week in Las Vegas, an event benefiting our local food bank, Three Square Las Vegas. Many excellent restaurants from famous chefs were participating, offering three course tasting menus at a bargain price of $50.10. The price would seem a bit high in any other city, but when you consider that the likes of Joel Robouchon, Charlie Palmer, Alain Ducasse, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and many more very famous chef's restaurants are involved, it's downright bargain-basement pricing.

We made reservations for five at Jean-Georges Vongerichten's steakhouse in Aria, a restaurant whose kitchen I had previously staged in (staging is essentially working for free, either for the experience or to apply for a job), because several in our party were desirous of steak, and I'm not one to turn down gratis beef...

Our reservations weren't until 9:30, so we had time to swing by Jean-Phillippe Patisserie and ogle sweets before dinner.

This place is essentially a hedonist's dream, a shop devoted to all things fattening and chocolaty. Above is a chocolate sculpture, my cell-phone camera does it no justice.

Around the shop are elaborately decorated cakes on rotating metal pillars, so detailed that even the bottom of each layer is hand piped and exquisitely decorated. They sell fancy desserts, gelato, coffee, candy, and $9 dollar milkshakes.

Our appetites now worked into a frenzy, we journeyed to Aria's second floor to indulge.

Jean-Georges Steakhouse is dark colored and masculine, split by glass walls stacked floor to ceiling with fine wine, leather booths, and the most comfortable bar stools in town. We had a beer at the bar before being escorted to our booth, a big half-circle number of buckskin colored leather. The restaurant's walls are ensconced with large, glowing, stylized cow-nose print designs, and the decor is a perfect intersection of classic steakhouse and modern Vegas.

I brought a special bottle of wine with us, a 2003 Donatella Cinelli Brunello di Montalcino Riserva that I had gotten from the vineyard itself whilst in Italy. The sommelier was happy to decant it for us, so that it would have time to breathe before our meal.

This restaurant was actually doing four courses for restaurant week, so it was a super bargain.

We started off our meal with a tiny cup of watermelon gaspacho, which was surprisingly savory.

There were two options for salad, above is an heirloom tomato, heart of palm, and avocado salad with a coconut vinaigrette. This was excellent, the coconut milk add just enough creaminess to cut the acid of the tomatoes, and the textures played together perfectly, with the crunchy heart of palm contrasting the smooth avocado, accented by the explosive juiciness of the tiny tomatoes. This would have been the best salad I'd ever had...

Were it not for this pickled peach and frisee salad with goat cheese and pistachios. I mean, wow. The sweetness of the peaches was complimented by just the slightest tang of vinegar, perfectly paired with the earthy crunch of pistachio and the unctuous creaminess of the goat cheese. There were two dressings, on the frisee just enough of a creamy ginger dressing to barely coat every morsel, and a peach vinaigrette that had the flavor of 10 peaches in each bite. It was fantastic, every single bite was perfect, the flavors complimentary, and the elements at the peak of freshness, not even the tiniest flaw to be found. I wish I could eat this every day.

And then there was the NY Strip, perfectly seared rare over a wood grill, with the crunchiest herbed potatoes, and a salsa verde that was like summer itself, herbaceous and brilliant green.

Still reeling from the incredible courses we'd just laid waste to, they brought us dessert.

I had a lemon meringue tart, with a quenelle of homemade vanilla ice cream, and a dollop of intensely flavored raspberry puree. Quite refreshing and immensely satisfying.

There was also an exquisite molten chocolate cake, with cinnamon ice cream and a toffee chip. Jean-Georges actually invented this dish, and it's still the finest example of this cake to be found anywhere. The cake itself is richly flavored but light and fluffy, the molten center is intense and rich.

After our meal, the waiter came to our table and said that they had comped the corkage fee on our wine (awesome, I've never heard of a restaurant doing that here) and asked if the whole party would like to go back to the kitchen to meet chef de cusine Gerald, who had remembered me from the day I staged in the kitchen a few months ago. It was pretty damn cool, we thanked him profusely for the excellent, perfect meal, and everyone was pretty thrilled to see the celebrity chef's kitchen in person.

I had previously read reviews of some other restaurant week offerings, and a major complaint from locals was that many of the restaurants treated them with less consideration, some even bordering on contempt when they ordered from the special menu. At Jean-Georges though, they treated us with the same outstanding service as the high rollers around us, perhaps better, and that's saying a lot, considering that the restaurant was taking a hit serving these ingredients at such a low cost and giving a portion of the proceeds to charity. That alone speaks volumes about the chef, and his staff, and to me really shows how passionate they are about what they do.

I can't recommend Jean-Georges Steakhouse highly enough, is is well worth the regular menu cost if ever you visit Las Vegas.

We decided to show my brother's wife the world's largest chocolate fountain, so journeyed through Crystals en route to Bellagio, Crystals has my favorite staircase in Las Vegas...

Hard to tell from the picture, but it's polished dark wood, with inlaid agate crystals of all colors, lit from underneath.

The fountain in question is at Jean-Phillippe's other pastry shop, in the Bellagio, here's a life sized lady made out of chocolate...

And the closest thing you can get to Willy Wonka's in real life, the world's largest chocolate fountain.

Until next time, ciao!

Catching up

I hate to do this, but I must. I feel pretty terrible about it- each day of our trip to Portland, Oregon and Washington state deserves its own blog entry, but I've gotten way too far behind, and if I'm ever going to get caught up, I have to cram this stuff in. Sorry, Portland!

On our second day, we drove to Mount St. Helens in Washington, and it was a really educational and amazing trip. I had heard of the eruption before, but never really thought too deeply about it or its impact on the region and its aftermath's wealth of research material for scientists.

In the Johnston Ridge observatory, there's a visitor's center with an awesome short film about the eruption and a lot of information about Mt. St. Helens. The tree above was snapped like a twig seconds after the side of the volcano collapsed.

Behind me is a river that was filled with ash from the cloud in a matter of minutes. On the scenic drive to the volcano, giant trees are scattered everywhere like toothpicks, and the new growth is starting to get a foothold after three decades.

And there she is, ominous, impressive, her cratered face a grim reminder of the sheer power of the earth's natural creative forces.

We also visited Astoria, Oregon, which was a charming place with a neat maritime museum. Go there for the salmon... the reddest, juiciest salmon you'll ever have! There's also a place in town that smokes salmon, scallops, sturgeon... you name it. I forgot to upload a picture for you, (this blog program is a bit tricky when it comes to uploads- if I forget to do it at the beginning I'm S.O.L.) but just know that it's a great place to visit.

Portland is teeming with excellent food, whether it be from one of the hundreds of varied street carts or from her finer dining establishments. One of the meals we had that really stood out (though every meal we had was pretty damn spectacular) was at Red Star Tavern, a roast house with a giant spit and wood oven.

Candy beet carpaccio with watercress, aoli, and toasted pistachios. Excellent earthy flavor, colorful presentation.

A superb Kobe beef brisket, with demi glace, caramelized onions, and sauteed Swiss chard with chorizo. It was sublimely crusted on the outside, and buttery tender in the center. I could have kept eating this forever. Actually, I feel pretty sad that I'm not eating it right now!

Amazingly delicious grits with ham hock, "Red Star" gravy, melted cheese and wild mushrooms. This could have been an entree unto itself, with no qualms from any of us!

Part of Portland's charm is its ability to embrace the counter culture and make it acceptable and even encouraged. One of its most popular joints is Voodoo donuts, which has a line half a block long from its door every morning.

They have charming little (okay, huge) fresh donuts, such as the namesake Voodoo Doll pictured above- he's got raspberry filling and a little pretzel "pin" through his heart, very tasty, but what I really wanted was...

A maple BACON donut!!!! So, so very wrong, and at the same time, sinfully right. It tasted... exactly like you think a maple BACON donut would... like awesome. It tasted like pure awesome.

My Dad wanted to return to Mama Mia's Trattoria, a restaurant he loved last time he visited Portland, and with good reason. They make great pastas and pizzas from scratch, without pretension, and just have damn good food. The lasagna above was excellent, layers of herbs, home made mozzarella, home made sausage, home made pasta... I guess you get the gist. There's no way the food could not be great there, it's oozing with love!

On our way to the Columbia River Gorge, we stopped for lunch at a hippie estate (trust me, it's a good thing) called McMinnamin's. They make their own wine... and beer, and spirits, and they have a restaurant, pool hall, bar, hotel... they do everything, and they do it damn well. The beer was good, but...

The home made (there's a theme going here, Oregon...) beef and blue cheese sausages with fresh-ground mustard and warm potato salad my Dad had for lunch were very memorable. This is another recipe I'm going to try to recreate at home...

The Columbia River Gorge is absolutely breathtaking, pictures really do it no justice. It's huge, too; an intimidating piece of nature.

And on the scenic highway that runs beside the gorge, there's waterfalls. Lots of them, and they're all spectacular.

Oregon stole my heart. Every day I spent there, I fell a little bit more in love with it, but the waterfalls really sealed the deal. I mean, how can you get better than great food and awe-inspiring waterfalls?

I mean, I guess you could show me a 400lb, 10 foot long, 70 year old sturgeon named Herman, just to make me gasp. Prehistoric show-off!

Back to the food. Metro Vino was a bit loud for my parents, (they're getting old, poor dears!) but they had good food. Above is a glazed pork chop with hazelnuts, cauliflower, and sauteed polenta. Very tender, very nice.

Oh, Portland, you and your beautiful clean streets, outdoor sculptures, and resourceful public transit. I guess your amazing art museum doesn't hurt either. And the rose garden, Japanese garden, zoo...

And trompe l'oil murals. You're breaking my heart, Portland.

Hrm, I know! We'll test you by stopping in to a random restaurant on a side street, see if you can still impress me when you're not prepared, no reading of reviews, no Internet searches of menus... Higgins! We'll try that...

Oh, house-cured charcuterie? Lardo? Taratelli? A pork-centric menu? Attentive, knowledgeable service, tattooed waitstaff...
And an incredible beer list? Well... fine. You win, Portland.

Among many, many things I learned in Portland, was a new perspective on food. every meal we had, whether it was from a cart or white-tablecloth establishment, was good. The ingredients were very fresh, local, and the preparation exuded pride.

The food was honest. It didn't pretend towards finery, it didn't try too hard. Good product, and an obvious commitment towards preparation on the part of the cooks and chefs. There's a lot going for Portland, and I feel really great to have gotten the opportunity to indulge myself so well in such an amazing city.

The whole vacation with my parents was a great way to come back to the States. Everything we did was fun, delicious, and educational. It felt really nice to explore a new place with them, and I feel nothing but overwhelming gratitude that they decided I could tag along. I really got a lot out of it.

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for everything! You'll never know how much I really do appreciate it.

I spent a couple of days in San Francisco, which will be the subject of my next entry, though I'm not sure if I will be able to write it over the weekend or if it will have to wait until Monday. Tomorrow morning I'm driving to L.A. to visit my brother and his wife, and possibly a couple of friends of mine, so I'll try to come up with something about that as well.

Ciao!