Morning Walk

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I was thinking of skipping my usual morning walk today as it was supposed to feel like 25° because of the wind chill. When I actually took the dog out, though, not a branch was stirring and it was 39° on the my back porch. So Brindy and I took a walk down to the lake. Hope your day started as nicely as mine.

  • The Village
  • Part of the Hilton
  • Lake Las Vegas

Lunch Foodie Tour

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I’ve finally gotten my act together and scanned in the menus for the foodie tour I took for my birthday. The restaurants were in either the Aria or the Cosmopolitan hotels on the Las Vegas Strip.

First up was Javier’s. It’s a beautiful place, Here, for instance is the Aztec inspired, chain-saw carved wood wall:

And here’s the menu:

Everything about the dishes was elevated; the chips were perfectly salted, the various sauces each delicious (my mouth is literally starting to water as I write this), and the enchiladas are well worth the return trip we are planning. Even the rice and beans were tastier than any others in memory.

From Javier’s it was on to Estiatorio Milos which more than lived up to its reputation as one of North America’s finest Greek restaurants. They are known for sourcing only the highest quality ingredients, and, wow, does it show.

I don’t particularly like tomatoes on their own, but I could have made a meal of these (and probably would have if I wasn’t trying to pace myself for what was to come).

The next plate was the octopus. It was incredible: soft and smoky. It was not just the best octopus I’ve ever had, it’s the best seafood I’ve ever had!

Hard to imagine how anything could compare to these first two dishes, but the third was also spectacular. Even with a mandolin, I’m not sure I could even come close to achieving the thinness of the vegetables.

We finished off every plate at Milos which left us all rather full and we were only halfway through the tour.

Our third stop was Momofuku. The food here was very well presented; it just didn’t happen to be to my taste. I’m not a cucumber fan as I dislike tasting them for the next 24 hours after I’ve eaten them. And the ramen was just a touch too spicy for me. The buns were very good, however.

Our last stop was Wolfgang Puck’s Cucina. By this point we were all stuffed and wondering how we could eat any more. Somehow, though, we all found room for a little desert.

I couldn’t eat everything on the plate, so it’s just as well the tiramisu was too coffee flavored for me. The brownie was my favorite, but the limoncello was a very close second.

The people we book these tours with are LipSmacking Foodie Tours and we had the guide all to ourselves this time. Nice, because we got to talk to him a lot more about the restaurants and the food and the history of the Strip. One of our group has a birthday in May and we’re hoping to take another tour with them of the Arts District downtown.

Goose Bump Moments

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Moment #1

I’m planning on going see the latest Star Wars movie this week and decided to watch all the previous ones in preparation. I had forgotten just how bad some of them were and how much fun others were. It got me thinking about when and where I saw the very first one.

I was driving around on some back roads in the San Gabriel Mountains one Sunday morning in May, 1977. I turned a PBS radio station on and was immediately captivated by the music they were playing. I was so intrigued that I pulled over before I got out of range of the signal and waited to hear what it was: turns out it was the sound track to a movie called Star Wars.

A few days later I played hooky from my teaching job and went into Los Angeles to finish up my paperwork for joining the Navy. I finished around lunch time. I certainly wasn’t going to try to rush back to work, so I found myself at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre for one of the first showings of Star Wars.

Sitting in that opulent theater, hearing that John Williams score burst out of the speakers, and seeing those now iconic lines scroll across the screen was truly astounding. It was like nothing I had ever heard or seen before and no movie has ever come close to recreating that moment for me.

Moment #2

A second moment occurred while watching the 1984 Winter Olympics. Jayne Torvill and Christopher Deane skated to Ravel’s Boléro. It’s hard now to explain just how mind-blowingly different their performance was compared to every one else, because it set the new standard. Ice dancing was never the same afterwards. I remember almost forgetting to breathe during the whole routine. If you’ve never seen it or have forgotten it, it’s available on YouTube. I just watched it again and it still gave me chills.

If you’ve got any such moments, let me know about them in the comments.

Recipe for Gooey Chocolate Caramel Cake

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For those of you who want to try the cake recipe I made for my birthday, here’s the site: https://pinchofyum.com/gooey-chocolate-caramel-cake

The site also has much better pictures than mine! Just looking at them just now made me crave the cake; fortunately I still have a few pieces left.

BTW, the only change I made to the recipe was to add some coarse salt to the top of the caramel. So it’s actually Gooey Chocolate Salted Caramel Cake!

Last Night’s Birthday Dinner

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Usually I make people take me out for a great steak or something on my birthday. This year I decided I would cook dinner for a few friends instead. (I am, however, being taken out for an afternoon “foodie” tour on The Strip later this week.)

Dinner was a Wagyu chuck roast done for just over 26 hours with my sous vide machine. $8.98 a pound, more than a regular chuck roast would have been, but way, way less than the tenderloin I was originally considering. Oh my, was it ever delicious!

Also had baked potatoes. I tried a new technique: you roll the potatoes around in heavily salted water before you put them in the oven (2 tablespoons of salt in 1/2 cup of water). Otherwise cooked them up pretty much as usual. The salt adds just enough flavor to the skins to make them extra delicious.

As for the vegetable, mom swears she doesn’t like Brussel Sprouts. Then whenever I fix them, she decides that mine are ok. Last night they went way beyond ok; they were the best I’ve ever made and mom took seconds!

Here’s how to do them, courtesy of America’s Test Kitchen:

Skillet-Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Mustard and Brown Sugar

1 pound small (1 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter) Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved

5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
Pepper (I used a little Aleppo) to taste
Salt

BEFORE YOU BEGIN
Look for Brussels sprouts that are similar in size, with small, tight heads that are no more than 1 1/2 inches in diameter, as they’re likely to be sweeter and more tender than larger sprouts.

INSTRUCTIONS
Arrange Brussels sprouts in single layer, cut sides down, in 12-inch nonstick skillet. Drizzle oil evenly over sprouts. Cover skillet, place over medium-high heat, and cook until sprouts are bright green and cut sides have started to brown, about 5 minutes.

Uncover and continue to cook until cut sides of sprouts are deeply and evenly browned and paring knife slides in with little to no resistance, 2 to 3 minutes longer, adjusting heat and moving sprouts as necessary to prevent them from overbrowning. While sprouts cook, combine remaining ingredients except salt in small bowl.

Off heat, add mustard mixture to skillet and stir to evenly coat sprouts. Season with salt to taste. Transfer sprouts to large plate. I added a few pomegranate seeds to mine just to add some color.

You could use lots of other combinations of sauces and seasonings, of course, but I have never used a more fool proof or delicious cooking method.

As for desert: I usually make a yellow cake with fudge frosting for my birthday. Last year, however, I made a chocolate caramel cake for a friend and it was decadently delicious. It is called “Gooey Chocolate Caramel Cake” and it is hard for me to decide whether it is more cake or brownie or pudding or what. It is a layer of cake, covered with chocolate chips, covered with the best caramel I’ve ever made, and topped with more cake. To say that it is “gooey” does not begin to describe its lusciousness.

Hope the new year is starting off for all of you as well as it is for me!

A Non-Computer Extended Weekend

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I somehow managed to do entirely non-computer related things from Friday afternoon until now. This amount of time away from my desk is unusual unless I am on a transoceanic cruise.

What in the world was I doing to entertain myself? Well, some reading, some board game playing with mom and a lot of cooking and baking.

Most of the TV watching I do these days is either home improvement or cooking shows. I also enjoy lectures from the Great Courses and I have just finished several seasons of America’s Test Kitchen.

In the past, I always rather slavishly followed recipes. Watching all these cooking shows has encouraged me to be a lot freer when cooking. I am a lot more likely to just start throwing things into a skillet and seeing how they come out. The downside to this is that when I do something really well, I am unlikely to be able to replicate it.

Friday I was baking oatmeal-craisin cookies. Craisins give the cookies a little more tartness than the usual raisins. I put the first batch in the oven and checked them at four minutes. What I saw was a pile of raw dough surrounded by liquid.

Now I am definitely a mise en place sort of cook and I was sure I had measured out all the ingredients before hand; but I carefully went down the list again. Wet ingredients, dry ingredients; no, I hadn’t missed anything. Meantime, I had pulled the cookies out.

I went back to the counter and checked my ingredient list once again. Then I saw it: the flour was still sitting in the measuring bowl. Rats! The dough I had rescued from the oven was still so malleable that I put all of it back into the bowl, threw in the flour, and started dolloping out the dough once more. Not the best cookies I’ve ever made, but quite edible.

Saturday was much more successful. Lunch was a mélange of pantry items and leftovers: chickpeas, black beans, corn, mushrooms, and some diced up summer sausage. All simmered in some coconut milk with some deeply caramelized onions I had pulled from the freezer. Seasoned with cumin, chili powder, pepper, and who knows what else. Served over rice. Fantastic!

The pepper I am using these days for most things is Aleppo. Black pepper to me is mostly heat, but no particular flavor. Also, I hate grinding peppercorns, eating my meal, having a fabulous dessert, and only then having some small piece of peppercorn make an appearance in my month and completely ruin the meal’s finish with an overpowering dose of heat.

Aleppo pepper is not as hot as red pepper flakes. And it has a slightly sweet and, to me, smoky flavor. Try it! I think you’ll like it.

Sunday I baked a cake. Now I have been becoming a fairly competent cook, but I have not tried my hand at much baking beyond cookies. Sunday I baked cake from scratch and made toffee from scratch and made frosting from scratch! Whew! Everything tasted great and for my first try I’m quite pleased with the way it turned out.

Here is my sticky toffee pudding cake.

Now it’s back to shooting radscorpions in Fallout 4.