Disillusionment

Up until 10 minutes ago thought I would grow up and marry Anthony Bourdain. Then I watched the latest "No Reservations".

He seemed perfect in every way. He cooks. He eats. He smokes. He drinks. He is irreverent, funny, godless, cynical and weird. He also hates Las Vegas.

Look, I agree with him that the strip is a garish nightmare of soulless capitalism. But for those of us who do not have the pleasure of living in a foodie town (of which there are only maybe 5 in all of North America) Las Vegas is the place where we can go and eat the best of the best without having to get on a plane to fly to a different city every night.

Thomas Keller (Bouchon in the Venetian), Tom Colicchio (craftsteak in MGM Grand), Takashi Yagihashi (Okada at Wynn), Daniel Boulud (Daniel Bouloud Brasserie also at Wynn), Charlie Palmer (Charlie Palmer Steakhouse at the Four Seasons), Commander's Palace, Krispy Kreme, Smith & Wollensky Steakhouse, Pink's Hot Dogs and deep fried Twinkies.

Fabulous spas, beautiful swimming pools, discount shopping, high end retail therapy (look but don't buy), luxurious hotel suites at low prices, "O" (the only Cirque du Soleil worth seeing), people watching, cheap booze, and you can smoke almost anywhere.

I'm sorry Tony. I thought we had a future.

Hell's Kitchen Confidential

I LURV Gordon Ramsey. I really do. Oh how I wish I could be his friend.

Having worked in the restaurant business for about 1000 years, I cannot for the life of me figure out what the hell is wrong with the "cooks" on Hell's Kitchen. How could it possibly take a working chef 2 hours to put out quail and beef Wellington? If I got the call from the Executive Chef, went and got changed out of chef whites, walked to a nearby grocery store to buy the ingredients, walked back to the kitchen, put my whites back on and cooked the damn thing from scratch, it wouldn't take 2 hours to put out a main course item.

On a related note, tomorrow brings another dinner party. Since it is too hot to cook it's gonna be rib steaks and baked potato on the charcoal barbeque, cold asparagus with dijon vinaigrette and my trademark summer dessert of gingersnap ice cream pie with roasted pineapple. This dessert is just too easy. If anybody wants to have a go, here is the (sort of) recipe:

Grind up ginger snap cookies in a food processor. Add enough butter to make it moldable, and toss in a little white sugar. Take half the mixture and line a fluted tart pan with a removable bottom. Line it with foil and fill it with pie weights (or the cheaper uncooked rice) and bake about 10 minutes or until golden. Chill. Take the other half and break it up into gravel size its and toss in onto a cookie sheet and bake at around 350 for about 10 minutes or until golden.

Soften up some high quality vanilla ice cream (I use Haagen Dazs French Vanilla) and mix the cooked cookie gravel into it and spread it into the pie shell. Stuff it back into the freezer until about 10 minutes before you want to eat it. Remove the sides of the tart pan and serve with fresh pineapple rounds that you have grilled on the warm barbeque.

This dessert always gets rave reviews and it couldn't be easier.

Now if somebody out there would like to make it for me and bring it over at around 7 pm tomorrow, that would be great.