Foodie F-Rants: Taste Bud Torture

In this edition of Foodie F-Rants....

I'm not a good sick person. Simply because I rarely get sick. When I do, no matter how severe the illness is; I am just miserable. Miserable because this usually means I won't be eating for a bit.

Having a cold is torture on the taste buds. If you have an appetite at all, the only thing that will satiate you is chicken or matzoh ball soup, tea and orange juice. Not exactly on a gourmand's wish list. And being under the weather, I am not exactly up to the challenge of finding quality matzoh ball soup outside of Manhattan.

So as I sit and wait for this illness to pass, I will try and conjure up some delicious meals to make up for the ones I am missing. I only hope my taste buds will forgive me for boring them to death.

A Salute to the Return of Top Chef!

In celebration of the return of Top Chef (fingers crossed it doesn't jump the shark this season) I thought I'd bring back my Tom Colicchio post... enjoy!


Below is my long overdue Vegas culinary recap. While it was a crazy jam-packed week of work related insanity, I did manage to hit a few restaurants during my stay.

First, was a trip to Emeril's in the MGM Grand. This was a staff dinner and I must admit that I was curious how the Food Network Kingpin's cuisine would fare. The verdict? Not so great. I started my meal with the miso glazed black cod with green onion soba noodles and sweet soy. It was actually pretty decent (and by default wound up being the highlight of the meal) but far from spectacular; flavorful without being overpowering but not super memorable.

I followed that up with the steamed grouper with lobster, gulf shrimp, shucked clams and vegetables in a saffron and shellfish broth; while sending most of my co-workers to the pecan crusted Texas redfish with grilled vegetables, stone ground grits and Creole meunière butter sauce (when in "New Orleans" get the Gulf fish, right?). Much to my surprise, the grouper arrived table side in a plastic bunched pouch - are the ladies from the Reynolds wrap commercials in the kitchen? When I opened the pouch I was left with a mismosh of nothing special. There wasn't enough salty sea flavor from the shellfish and the saffron didn't do much except add some color to the dish. Overall, very run-of-the-mill. In a town of excess you need to do a bit better to keep up with the competition.

After leaving the restaurant, we walked past CraftSteak. Long story longer, Top Chef Tom Colicchio was actually in the kitchen and came out to say 'hello'. My co-workers took a step back and left me face-to-face with Tom and his baby blues. We introduced ourselves and I alerted him to the fact that I was a food blogger and coming to CraftSteak (a place I've enjoyed on previous visits) the next evening so he should expect a review. He was pretty gracious and an all-around good sport.

The rest of the conversation went a little bit like this:

Tom: A food blogger? Oh, you're on of those... (laughs)
F: Yup. So expect a review...
Tom: What's your site? I'll check it out.

F: f is for foodie

Tom: f is for foodie dot com?

F: f is for foodie dot blogspot dot com (mumbling)

Then Tom seemed to be getting a little creeped out by my co-workers snapping our pics like crazed paparazzo (one of eleven posted above) and politely excused himself to get back to his event. That event happened to be a three-course $500/head dinner with wine tasting courtesy of the lovely folks from the awesome Shafer Vineyards. Not too shabby, Tom! I'd prefer the company of some Shafer cab sav myself!

That being said - JC, CJ and I returned the next evening for a beef extravaganza and we were not disappointed. We started with an excellent 'someday-I'll-learn-to-pronounce-it' charcuterie platter.

I went with the expertly cooked lean but tasty bison as my entree while JC and CJ split the soft as butter Porterhouse for two.

What an excellent char on the Porterhouse and a great cut of beef!

We rounded out our meal with a side order of chanterelles as well as the super creamy and delicious potato gratin.

The only downside to our meal was that our server didn't seem to take us as serious diners.

In fact, I felt like we were treated like some kids who snuck into the dining room. Our server even mocked me a bit when I told him that I was chatting up Chef Colicchio the prior evening. Not cool! And Victor, I am not a fly by night Top Chef freak fan I am a serious diner! You should treat every customer the same respect - c'mon you should know better!

On one of the only other nights I was able to have a proper meal was when a good number of our team managed to snag the back room at Planet Hollywood's P.F. Chang's. Not sure if we were getting special treatment or they were looking to sequester us from the other diners but no matter...

I have never been to the chain before and I must say I was quite impressed with the chicken lettuce wraps and the kung pao shrimp. The fried rice was pretty decent as well and the overall 'grease factor' was much less than anticipated... or perhaps exhaustion and the shot of gin (thanks CJ!) I did before dinner made me a bit more easy on the cuisine.

As far as the on site catering, some things are better left unsaid.

I left Vegas exhausted and more than ready for culinary adventures in Spain and Portugal.

Stay tuned for the day by day recaps!

Bolognese Sauce Doctor'd Up

I've been becoming a regular at the West Hartford Farmer's Market. One of the items I've been eyeing on my visits is Sankow's Beaver Brook Farm's Bolognaise Sauce. For a mere ten bucks you can have one quart of sauce that includes ground lamb, tomatoes, onions, celery, carrots red wine, extra virgin olive oil, lamb stock, garlic, spices and salt.

While I prefer the Italian "Bolognese" to the French "Bolognaise" I was still intrigued and decided to treat myself. How bad could it be?

As my salted water was bubbling away, I started to heat up the sauce and once warm gave it a taste. It was a bit sweet for my palate and finally determined it was the large amount of carrots that were adding an overpowering sweetness of the sauce. I decided to add a can of tomatoes and season generously with salt, pepper, crushed red pepper and nutmeg. After the flavors began to settle and the rigatoni was cooking away, I still needed to add something else to the sauce and was kicking myself for not buying tomato paste on my last trip to the supermarket!

What else can thicken this up and off set the sweetness? After combing through my pantry and fridge, I finally decided to throw in some eggplant I had roasted the day before. What do I have to lose?

It wound up being a pretty successful experiment and after a liberal helping of grated cheese I had a delightful meal whose depth of flavor was even more pronounced on the next day when I heated up some pasta for lunch.