David Ross

Last night, actually the process started Friday, I served a Cuban Roast Pork based on a recipe in the latest issue of Saveur. You start by marinating a pork shoulder the day before in orange juice, lime juice, cumin seed, black pepper, oregano, garlic and olive oil. The recipe calls for braising the pork for about 4 hours. I changed things up a bit. I put the pork over a bed of pickled red onions that I had made last week. Then the pork, then the braising liquid, into a heavy, covered pot and into a 300 oven for 8 hours. I then roasted it uncovered in a 400 oven for 45 minutes. I served the pork sliced over some steamed rice that was flavored with green onions, peas and a bit of saffron, the reduced pork braising liquid and some corn bread that had cheddar cheese, green onion and fresh jalapeno added. The pork turned out really good, almost as good as the pork belly I make. Very juicy and the sauce was a mix of sweet and sour. The pickled red onions just melted into the sauce and I think that added a lot of flavor.

You really have tons of choices within steps of where you'll be hanging your coat. Caesar's and the adjoining Forum Shops have plenty of great restaurant choices. To the South and just across the street are the great restaurants of Bellagio and to the East and up the street a bit to the North of course are The Venetian, Treasure Island, The Mirage and Wynn. But rather than make a broad swath across a big distance of the strip, and since you only have three nights, I'd stick close to your digs at Caesar's and here are some good choices that shouldn't disappoint: At Caesar's: Guy Savoy, Formal French Cuisine and Service, expect to pay about $275 per person for the tasting menu, wines would be extra. A memorable experience well worth the high price. Bradley Ogden, American Cuisine based on farm fresh products with a California influence. More reasonable in price than Savoy, about $150 per person for three courses and wines. I would avoid Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill. I think there is more allure to the celebrity moniker rather than a focus on outstanding food. Payard Patisserie and Bistro just opened, French Bistro and Pastries, but it is really still too early to tell if it has settled in. RJ Wong will be eating there in a couple of days and report back to us. If you don't mind trying a new outpost of a New York restaurant, give this one a shot. The Forum Shops at Caesar's: BOA Steakhouse in the Forum Shops is a short walk out of the Caesar's casino. Good seafood and steak. Next door, and owned by the same corporation, is the Sushi Roku. As the name implies, fresh sushi if that is your thing. Spago-the dining room, at the Forum Shops. Don't settle for the cafe that is out front and where you dine amongst the hordes of shoppers walking by, get a reservation in the dining room. While it may be a celebrity chef restaurant, aka Wolfgang Puck, don't think it is another chef is missing type of restaurant. The food is American with Puck's usual Italian and European influences, maybe a bit of Asian cuisine thrown in, but all good. I always have found the service to be very good. Some favorites: Blueberry Mojito Cocktail, Cauliflower Soup with Foie Gras, any roasted bird or the fresh seafoods. If you do want to take a quick cab ride to another hotel, here are three of my favorites that are close: Valentino at The Venetian, Classic Italian. While Mario Batali's B & B is getting the press lately at the Venetian, Valentino is a better choice for Italian. Bypass the cafe and bar out front and eat in the formal dining room. I will never forget my last pasta dish at Valentino-braised beef stuffed ravioli with a garlic cream sauce that sounds simple but was anything but simple. Delicious. Wing Lei at The Wynn, Classic Chinese but using fresh, seasonal American products. Call ahead and ask if they can prepare a special tasting menu for you. It's about $150 per person. The ala carte menu is extensive and the Peking Duck tasting menu interesting, but to challenge the chef and the staff, and to get a really good taste of what they can do, ask if they can prepare a tasting menu. They obliged me when I made that request in May and the dinner was fabulous. Alex at The Wynn, American Cuisine with French Accents. The dining room is grand, (Savoy is somewhat staid), the service relaxed yet gracious, the food is incredible. The tasting menu with wines is the best way to sample Alex Stratta's cuisine and runs about $250 per person with wines. At a private lunch in May, my favorite dishes were the vegetable crudites with a black truffle dipping sauce and the roasted quail stuffed with foie gras. Really wonderful presentations on the plate. Let us know how your trip goes and please add photos if you can. Enjoy.

I have been caught-another Bugle addict! And to further my embarassment, I buy my Bugles at the haven of retro snack foods-WalMart. Yes, it is true. I absolutely love Bugles but rarely eat them, usually only once a year, a tradition started by my Aunt Bertie many, many years ago. Aunt Bertie would always give us a goodie bag for our journey from Idaho back to our home in Oregon each Summer. We always had a bag of Bugles in the goodie bag. So now when I take a driving trip in the Summer I always place a bag of Bugles on the front passenger seat to snack on during the drive. I usually make it to around 730am before I start digging in. Delicious those little Bugles.

I must have gotten a bad batch or something. After I opened the container and it looked like weak soup, I tasted it and it in fact tasted like weak beef bouillion, not at all like duck and veal demi-glace. Anyway, lesson learned and next time I plan on making cassoulet, I'll probably do it from scratch.

I ordered the D'Artagnan Cassoulet Kit online last week. I should have made my own recipe using ingredients I bought separately. I would only give it a 'B' grade. The meats were fine: Duck Confit, Garlic Sausage, Duck and Armagnac Sausage and Ventriche (Cured Pork Belly). My problem was with the Duck and Veal Demi-Glace that came with the kit. It was the consistency of weak black tea. I contacted D'Artagnan and told them that I thought something was wrong with the demi-glace. They weren't overly supportive in their response but rather defensive that their demi-glace wasn't a 'paste.' I never suggested it was a paste, but that I was concerned the demi-glace wasn't as thick as it probably should be. They didn't offer to replace it but only to refund my money on that part of the kit, which I accepted. In the end, I ended up using beef stock as a substitute because I didn't want to venture out in our bad weather to buy some veal demi-glace at the store. Sadly, I think the lack of flavor that would have come from true duck and veal demi-glace watered down my finished cassoulet. Does anyone have another source for a Cassoulet 'Kit'? Thanks.

Man, David Ross, your food looks stunning, as usual. I don't like herring in cream but your photo makes me want some. And yes to the pickled red onions. If you don't have any in the fridge, even a 30 minute soak in rice vinegar makes a big difference in taste, texture and appearance. ← Thank you. I was trying to create a Scandanavian theme menu and I thought this salad would fit within that theme. I couldn't find my Rick Bayless recipe for the pickled onions, so I made one up using apple cider vinegar, water, sugar and mixed pickling spices. I cheated and put in a few drops of red food coloring to bring out the pink hue of the onions.

Thank you! I cooked the lamb rack and butterflied leg of lamb the same way-seared for about 4 minutes per side in a cast iron skillet, then into a 450 oven. I roast the meat in the oven for about 5 minutes per side. I don't use a meat thermometer to check the meat temperature. I use the finger poke method and when I feel the meat is medium rare when I poke it, I take it out. (The meat gives just a bit when I poke it but it is not soft). I only let it rest for about 5 minutes before carving. This is the same method I use for steaks. I'd say for a full rack of lamb the total cooking time between searing and roasting is 18-20 minutes.

I agree with everyone who has mentioned that context is so important when compiling a list of your top restaurant meals of 2007. I only listed Guy Savoy, Las Vegas since it was far superior to any of the many restaurants I visited in 2007. However, context played an important role in naming just Guy Savoy. Just the mere fact that I was at a private dinner at Savoy celebrating the one-year anniversary of the opening of the restaurant vaulted it to the top of my list. And of course with Chef Savoy in the kitchens the food was superb. So for a total restaurant experience in 2007, no other place I visited would be able to come close to duplicating all the elements that came into play that one night at Savoy. We are all studied critics and reviewing restaurants is such a vast subject I feel like we almost need to break down our lists further into categories like type of cuisine and price range. And this is where context comes into play. The context of a meal at Guy Savoy is going to be different than the context of a meal at a local Chinese restaurant. That doesn't mean the roast duck I had at The Hong Kong Cafe in Spokane wasn't as good as the dinner at Savoy, just a different context. The Hong Kong Cafe is a Mom and Pop restaurant run out of a former Dairy Queen. You wouldn't imagine authentic Szechuan cuisine coming out of a fast food kitchen-but the roast duck is delicious-with a deeply lacquered, crispy skin and juicy-fatty meat. They were surprised when I walked in and I ordered off the menu of specialties rather than the daily 'combinations' posted over the order counter. They took great care to chop the duck and wrap it for me to take home. I think they were pleased to serve someone who ordered something more than egg drop soup. So in 'context' that was probably the top roast duck I had in 2007. Mind you, I ate more than a few roast ducks in 2007, but that was the best. The little cafe in Spokane run out of a former burger joint. The Hong Kong Cafe couldn't match what Savoy offered, but in the context of Chinese roast duck, they were number one.

Last night was a salad of Herring in Sour Cream, Butter Lettuce and Pickled Red Onion. I try to always keep a batch of pickled red onions in the fridge. Very easy to make and they retain this beautiful pink color. Just about any recipe you pull off the web works fine: Then the entree was Roast Leg of Lamb with Spicy Dark Beer Sauce and Roasted Carrot and Parsnip. I make this sauce a lot in the winter and the recipe is from the Alaskan Brewing Company. It starts with their Smoked Porter which they only offer in December. This time I used Guinness, and then reduced it with soy sauce, honey, molasses, and many different spices: mustard seed, cumin seed, caraway seed, fennel seed, mixed pickling spices, cinnamon stick and lots of nutmeg. Yes it's a lot of ingredients but you are left with this thick, spicy syrup that is very fragrant:

Lord what a delicious looking feast. Can you post some recipes for us?

Steven-You didn't mention Martin Heierling, Chef at Sensi at Bellagio. He would have added to the roster of chefs for the Beard House dinner. And he might have satisfied your wish for something simple-as you say, "just serve a piece of fish." Sensi is often one of the overlooked restaurants at Bellagio. The main dinner crowds tend to go to the more well-known restaurants that border the fountains like Prime, Picasso, Le Cirque and Olives. What a shame. Sensi is as good as those other dining rooms, albeit with a unique style and layout with the kitchen placed in the center of the dining rooms and encased in glass. Should anyone go to Sensi, ask for the live Santa Barbara spot prawns if they are in season. It is the definition of a simple grilled piece of shellfish. Sweet meat with a charred shell. And don't miss sucking on the delicious head of the prawn. I can understand chefs wanting to put on the Ritz when they cook at the Beard House, but if Mr. Beard were alive today-he might agree with you-"I just want a simple piece of fish."

I'm glad you took John up on the invitation. If we can sway more folks, especially New Yorker's, to experience the cooking of the chefs from Las Vegas than that is a good thing for the restaurant community in town. I'm not a resident of Las Vegas but an avid cheerleader of the growing restaurant industry in town. "Celebrity" Chefs bring in the tourists in Las Vegas, but it's the men and women who are in the kitchen, in residence, night after night, that carry out the workload-and insure the quality is up to the standards of the chef/owner. Kudos to them and I am glad you had positive comments about the Beard House dinner.

And hey, there's green is there! Totally nutritious. The dish looks delicious...do you use a lightbox?(I'm missing the sunshine for my pics) ← No light box used. I put the plated dish on the dining room table which is under a brightly lit chandelier. Then I put a piece of white foamcore board behind the plate. The foamcore works as a sort of backdrop to bounce the light back on the food. I'm using Windows Vista operating system on my computer, which incorporates the latest version of Windows Photo Gallery. That gives me the opportunity to do a lot of color and light editing to my photos before I post them on eGullet. Thanks for the nice comments.

By all means, the small digital cameras will serve your needs. I use a Canon Powershot SD1000 with 7.1 megapixels for my food postings in this thread. For really close up shots I use the digital macro feature. But for the above shot of the chicken on linguine, I set the camera on manual, no flash, then use the macro setting. Seems to work o.k for me. I think the camera was about $350 at Sear's. Be careful though with your camera in the kitchen. I've let greasy hands get on the camera, allowing it to slip out of my hands and dropping to the floor-with the lens open! Not a pretty sight and the demise of that particular camera.

Earlier this week, chicken breast stuffed with prosciutto, arugula and parmesan. Served on linguine tossed with more arugula and parmesan. I suppose this is my idea of a diet dish for 2008. You know, chicken on the menu when one is dieting!

Didn't he say something about "pure starch" as the future, or is my memory failing me (possibly from McGee?)? That would mean the potato or corn starch we use today. Did Escoffier ever use arrow root? ← The book I am reading is titled "The Life of a Chef" by Chef Edward F. Mathieu. The book was published in 1958, and chronicles the chefs life from his birth in France in the 1880's through his childhood, service in the French Cavalry and then his migration to New York. His most notable posts were at The Palace Hotel and Fairmont in San Francisco (when it opened after the big quake), and 30 years spent as the head chef of the Davenport Hotel in Spokane. Chef Mathieu often refers to contacts he made with Escoffier and his son while he was still living in France. That's pretty impressive. I will re-read the book to find Chef Mathieu's exact quotes about making stocks and using thickeners. I know this is a bit off topic, but I wanted to share a few anecdotes from the book. At the end of the book there are some sauce recipes and they are quite interesting for us to read today-100 years after Chef Mathieu started as a young chef. These are some of the classic sauces that are rarely used or remembered today: Sauce Portuguese, Duglere Sauce for 'Fish,' and Cardinale Sauce for 'Fish.' Even more interesting, the number of variations of cooking eggs that Chef Mathieu was trained to use in the kitchens of the St. Regis in New York, circa 1900: Shirred: Mirror, Bercy, Meyerber, Rothomago, Rossini, Melba, Hunter, Americane, Marine, Beurre Noir. Poached: Benedict, Monte Carlo, Grand Duke, Argenteuil, Aurora, Garlin, Vienna. Cocotte: Portuguese, Jeannette, Zingara, Marine. Omelettes: Creole, Mushroom, Reine, Princess, Chatelaine, Hunter Style, Farmerette, Savoy, Cardinale, Provencale, Lyonnaise, Fine Herbes. Scrambled: With kidneys, crab, mushrooms, truffles, chicken livers, asparagus tips, cheese, ham, bacon, shrimps, etc. Au Gratin: Florentine, Victoria, Tetrazine. No wonder the true classics aren't seen on today's menus-Glace or Eggs!

I don't know of any publications out there who do a competitive type of review, but it should be pretty easy for you. I would break your judging criteria into a few different areas to make it easier for you and for the judging to be fair. Categories like Flavor, Presentation and Appropriate to Theme, come to mind. Then assign a point value to each category. That's the basic judging criteria behind Iron Chef. For the concept to really work, and be fair, the publication should ask the restaurants to do exactly the same dishes. For example, Risotto. While each restaurant may do a different version of Risotto-one might be classic and the other might incorporate shellfish-your judging would be based on fair criteria for what makes a great risotto-creamy rice cooked to just the right texture. If they just set a theme of say "Italian" that wouldn't be as fair. One chef might do a Roman pasta dish while another chef would do a seafood dish from Venice. It would be hard to judge between the two in that case.

No issues with it getting gluey when it cools off a bit? That's an issue I sometimes have with sauces that have piles of gelatin. ← I wouldn't say the texture was gluey, but when the sauce chills it has the consistency of jelly. But when I melt it down over a medium-low heat it is back to the perfect sauce consistency. I'm currently reading a book written by a chef who worked at the Fairmont Hotel and Palace Hotel in San Francisco in 1908! He mentions in the book that the chefs often used flour and arrowroot to thicken their sauces. I would have thought that back then they wouldn't have used starches to thicken their sauces but what do I know. I guess it is a matter of settling on a method that suits your tastes and your level of patience.

Thanks. You are the second person today to revive one of my older threads. Thank you. I will try your suggestions. During the holidays I myself got into the depths of the Escoffier method. I had found the shortcut recipes promising, but those recipes wouldn't have answered my personal taste test issue of the Escoffier method versus newer methods. I had to improvise though, I never found a source for scads of veal bones called for in Chef Escoffier's recipe-my reliable local butcher couldn't scare up 10 pounds of veal bones for a reasonable price. But knowing I had to use bones with a gelatinous quality, I found my answer in the Asian market-chicken wings, duck feet and pigs feet. So I used those bones along with an adaptation of Escoffier's master recipe for a chicken glace recipe. It turned out pretty well. In fact, here is a photo from the dinner using the chicken glace (also posted in the 'Dinner' thread). The sauce was thick and what you might say 'unctuous' on the tongue, and had a very deep chicken flavor. The thick texture of the sauce came simply from the bones and vegetables and lots of reduction stages-no butter, no flour, no cornstarch. Chicken, Polenta, Poulet 'Glace' with Mushrooms, Celery Victor:

Good Lord where have I been? I start the topic and abandon it, not having taken the time to "view" Giada in recent weeks. Now that college football is over for another year, I'll make it a priority to see the next showing of "Easy Italian."

You might want to try Morton's Bistro in West Salem-I think it is on Front Drive. It's only about a 10 minute drive from downtown. It's in a little old house and is very quaint. The menu is in the vein of New American and the chef makes everything himself in-house. Good food and reasonable prices.

This was New Year's Eve Dinner: Rack of Lamb, Mashed Potato with Caraway (just a last minute idea but I liked the licorice flavor of the Caraway in the Potato), Cranberry-Huckleberry Compote. I served an Arugula Salad on the side. An annual Holiday Dessert thanks to Williams-Sonoma-Cole's Christmas Pudding with Brandy Butter and Stem Ginger.

Rather than a list of my top restaurant meals of 2007, I'm going to give just one restaurant that without a doubt was at the top-Guy Savoy Las Vegas. (You can see photos and my review in the Guy Savoy thread Southwest and Western States Restaurant forums). The setting-a private dinner for about 35 guests to celebrate the one year anniversary of Guy Savoy at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. The dinner was sponsored by Bon Apetit Magazine as one of the signature events of their Las Vegas Food and Wine Focus. The guest list was memorable-Chef Savoy in the kitchens, Frank Savoy in the dining room and the President of Caesar's there to present the staff with an anniversary cake. My best dish for 2007 was served that night-one simple little bite of foie gras on toast that was served on silver skewers as we sipped vintage Rose' champagne. One might wonder how 4 simple ingredients can give one such pleasure. After that night in May, I no longer wonder why-foie gras, black truffle, butter and brioche in the hands of a Master-the best of 2007. My most cherished photo of 2007:

Thank you. I may have to trek out to Egger's Meats and buy another one for New Year's dinner. I think the beef gods gave me a Christmas gift-a prime rib roast for merely $14.99 a pound. Thank you Santa Claus.

You know me to well. Yes indeed, I did take a photo of the roasted beef-albeit a bit of a fuzzy photo-probably because I was shaking too much in anticipation of eating this giant. And I agree with you, that is the "Halleujah, Amen, God Have Mercy" moment-the smell of roasted beef filling the kitchen. Someone please get me a handkerchief to wipe away the tears.