Eating Las Vegas - Part One: Day One

Las Vegas is a city filled with food, some fabulous, some not-so-fabulous. On a recent trip there, my husband Neal and I experienced both.

On our first night in town, we had reservations for Border Grill, an outpost of Mary Sue Milliken's and Susan Feniger's (Too Hot Tamales) Santa Monica restaurant. It's located in the Mandalay Bay, and nearly impossible to locate if one enters from the street, as we did. After ordering a margarita and a scotch and soda, Neal and I carefully perused the menu of familiar Mexican foods. For starters, Neal tried the rock shrimp ceviche with jalapeno, mint, red onion, cilantro, and lime. It was delicious, with perfectly-textured pieces of "cooked" shrimp and bites of the onion and herbs. My Caesar salad consisted of several large slabs cut lengthwise from a head of romaine lettuce, with garlic croutons and a tangy-fishy dressing and a dose of grated romano cheese. The dressing was more citrus-y and less garlicky than typical Caesars.

I chose carnitas for my entree, and Neal ordered the marinated skirt steak. His entree was too strongly flavored with cumin for my tastes, and it reminded me of the smelly tourist on the airplane with us that day. The extremely tender steak was accompanied by a roasted corn salad, black beans, and a large flour tortilla. My carnitas failed to measure up to the memory I carry with me of the ones I ate in San Diego 20 years ago. These were good, don't get me wrong, but not posessing quite as much purely unadulturated "porkiness" as the ones of yore. The sides were all delicious - a dollop of guacamole, some cucumber citrus slaw, and an onion relish - and there was also one of those large flour tortillas. The tortillas I found a bit odd - they were really large, and I supposed we were to rip off chunks of it to encase our meat and sauces. That's what we did, anyway. But after a few bites, the tortilla got cold and oddly stiff, and it was a bit greasy too, as if the heating had come in the microwave and then for perhaps a few seconds too long.

By the time dessert rolled around, I was stuffed. I can't tell you what Neal ordered, as I've forgotten and nothing on the Web site menu looks familiar. I succumbed to a scoop of very tart lime sorbet, which really put me over the top.

Staggering back to our hotel, the Luxor, we discovered we could have quite easily traveled indoors from our casino to the restaurant via overstreet walkways. Duh. Well, now we knew to try that method of getting from one casino to the other for the rest of our trip.

 

Thanksgiving Soup

Before I tell you about my trip to Vegas and my dining experiences there (stay tuned for a future post!), I need to rant a bit about Rachael Ray.

Now, this uber-perky, whiney-voiced, no-talent, knows-little-or-nothing about cooking chick is probably a millionaire several times over now, and for what reason? Because she found a gimmick. But aren't there people out there who want to make a flavorful meal in a short amount of time? I've complained about her eggplant pasta sauce before - bland doesn't begin to describe the taste before heavy doctoring. Well, tonight, my husband decided to try her "Orange You Glad it's Thanksgiving" soup recipe - butternut squash and orange juice, with carrots and onion. After following the recipe to the letter (except for substituting canned pumpkin for the called-for frozen butternut squash puree; same thing), he ended up with an Orioles-orange soup that tasted just like...canned pumpkin. Only after adding a goodly amount of salt and pepper, doubling the amount of orange juice, and judicious seasoning with garlic, onion powder, and cumin, did it begin to taste like something. The cumin brought out the orange, and the much-needed salt brought out all of the flavors.

To gild the lily, we topped each serving with freshly grated orange rind and a dollop of goat cheese. I'm thinking it would also be wonderful with a garnish of crisply fried bacon or pancetta bits, pumpernickel croutons, and a snippage of parsley or cilantro. Serve with a nice arugula salad - now, that's tasty! We'll call it "Orange You Glad You Know How To Cook Better Than Rachael Ray?"

I'm thinking there's money to be had in a series of cookbooks based on The Cake Doctor, but "doctoring" up RR's recipes instead.

Radical Radishes

Most of us think of radishes as garnishes or something to brighten up the crudite tray. But have you ever eaten cooked radishes?

After my birthday party last Saturday, I had a huge bag of leftover crudites. I snacked on several of the radishes at work during the week, but there were still a good amount left by Thursday. I made a vague comment to my husband about cooking them somehow, and he ran with it. Last night we had sauteed radishes and onions as a side dish for leftover pork tenderloin. They were kickass! Tender and juicy, with a taste not unlike turnips, but without that metallic-y dirt taste. Yum! He had used the lone radish recipe from Joy of Cooking, but I got the idea that they could be used in more radical recipes.

Perhaps if one substituted the chicken stock and salt with a little soy sauce and added a bit of minced Chinese sausage, it would taste like one of my favorite dim sum dishes, turnip cakes? Or how about any of these recipes:
Cooked Radishes with Brown Sugar and Dill
Creamed Black Radishes
Sauteed Radishes
Scroll down to find Radishes with Pasta and Radish Greens

Something Fishy Around Here

It's taken me quite a while to get into sushi. My first experience was about fifteen years ago, on my first dinner excursion with a new friend at work. Felicia was a foodie who wanted to share food experiences with me. I made my first pot of gumbo with Felicia and her roommate; they put so many chiles in it, it was too incendiary to taste. We'd also have a semi-regular afternoon tea with homemade scones and lemon curd. Had I not assumed this first sushi adventure was a fluke, I would never have shared another meal with her.

My experience with Japanese food in the past had been limited to cooked items - tempura, tonkatsu, noodle soups, and teppanyaki. As a little girl, I always got a thrill out of those knife-wielding chefs who tossed shrimp at diners and set fires on the grill within a stack of onion rings. Sushi was still pretty alien to me - all I knew is that it was raw, and raw is yucky. My first taste of sushi did nothing to change this thought.

Kawasaki, a fine Japanese restaurant that has been operating on Charles Street in Baltimore for decades now, was where I lost my sushi cherry. Felicia steered me towards a sampler of cooked sushi, as she knew I was not ready for raw fish at that point. My plate contained cooked shrimp draped over rice, a California roll, some inarizushi (stuffed tofu skins), and tomago (omelette over rice). All of it disgusted me. Both the inari and the tomago were sweet, and the nori wrapper on the Cali roll was both chewy and fishy. The pickled ginger was hideous, and watching F stuff pieces of it into her sushi rolls before popping the whole mess into her mouth made me slightly queasy. Then she gave me a piece of raw tuna to taste. I demurred, but she insisted. It was cold and too thick and I felt like I was chewing on my own tongue. I gulped my ice water to help me swallow the offensive matter and vowed never to eat sushi again.

I actually had nightmares about the experience for many years. Seriously.

Not long ago, I decided to give it another shot. Someone had advised me to try the eel, as it was cooked and served in a familiar teriyaki-flavored sauce. I tried, and I liked - very much. A Korean buffet that Neal and I like has a selection of simple sushi rolls and nigiri, and I tasted them at random over a series of visits. Not having to pay extra for them made me feel bold, and if I didn't like something, I could always get rid of the taste with a mouthful of bulgogi.

Now, I occasionally crave sushi. I'm still not so much into the raw stuff, although I will eat it in or on a roll. Neal loves it, suprisingly enough, and always orders a selection of raw nigiri. Me, I'm all into the fancy rolls, and if they have the rice on the outside, and better yet, no nori at all, yum! And I still love the eel nigiri too. And the tamago and inari have grown on me as well, although I don't go out of my way to order them. And I love flying fish roe, but I've hated every other type of caviar I've encountered.

Our favorite sushi restaurant is Yokozuna in Ocean City, Maryland. They are very expensive, and the sushi is small (true Japanese style, I would imagine...tiny and pricey), but the combinations are unique and the fish is always very very fresh. If you go there, make room for dessert - I order the Kahlua chocolate Bundt cake, which they serve heated, a good 4" slab of chocolately evilness, and Neal gets a bowl of green tea ice cream. Good separately, but fabulous together.

Have I gone back to Kawasaki since that fateful tongue-chewing experience? Sure. They make yummy food. And I've even had sushi again.