Off the Subject

Okay, this post has nothing to do with food, religion or politics -- unless you count slurping the pages of a book as food. I have one other obsession that I don't talk about much -- I am a voracious, indiscriminate reader. Much of my reading is non-fiction -- theology for my adult education work, organizational development for paid and unpaid work, books for cook club and so on. Recently though, I found a web site called Read It Forward. My first book was a SciFi thriller called Ancestor by Scott Sigler. I picked it up about 7:30 last night after a hard day of curriculum development, designing promotional materials and creating PowerPoint to back up my presentation. I put it down at 2 this morning when I finished the last page. I can't tell you if it was plausible or if it was well-written, I can only tell you I was immediately sucked into a world of medical research gone horribly wrong. This would be a great beach book, but only if you never burn and you have really high SPF sunscreen!

My Latest Favorite

My instructions to Robert regarding a restaurant to celebrate my birthday: Here is 5280's list of top restaurants in Denver. Start with Fruition and call. When you reach someone at the restaurant, say, "I need to make a reservation for my wife's birthday. She's a vegetarian who cannot eat tomatoes, citrus or chocolate. Is that a problem?" When you reach a restaurant where they say "No problem," that's where I want to go for my birthday.
He only had to make one call. The person who answered at Fruition said it would not be a problem and she would leave a note for the chefs.
When we got to the restaurant, Matt, the manager, was handling the front of the house. He knew it was my birthday and he knew I was a friend of Jackie Rebideau. The waitress knew I was a vegetarian with food restrictions and the chef knew that he would substitute mushrooms for the tomato chutney that normally accompanies the vegetarian entree. I was thrilled not to have to explain any thing. I could sit back and enjoy a wonderful meal! This level of service was not limited to friends of friends, but offered to each diner who entered the restaurant.
Needless to say, Fruition won me over before a single dish hit our table. While the best front of the house people in the world cannot make up for lousy food, great service really enhances a restaurant experience when the kitchen is good.
That Alex Seidel of Fruition is one of Food and Wine Magazine's Best New Chefs of 2010 is no surprise to anyone who has eaten in the restaurant.
Don't expect huge quantities of food. This is not one of those places where you expect to eat tonight's leftovers for dinner tomorrow. This is a place where the servings are adequate, not super-sized. And that is as it should be. The food is superlative. I savored each bite and marveled at how each ingredient balanced another and the flavors bounced around in my mouth.
We enjoyed bread with butter topped with sea salt and parsley. Robert commented that it was nice to have room temperature butter to spread on the bread. It is a small detail, but, if the bread is not warm to melt butter, the butter should be room temperature. Who hasn't struggled with the icy cold butter clump on a slice of bread? I probably should have taken a picture of the butter, but you will have to imagine butter in a tiny white ramekin with a frosty looking topping of salt and parsley.
Apparently, the vegetarian option at Fruition generally involves two or three courses. Last night was a two course night called Grazing Vegetarians. The first course involved a single ravioli atop a bed of vinegary greens and topped with shreds of peppery radish and sweet white raisins. I forgot to take a picture until I had toppled the whole thing for my first bite, but imagine this all carefully in a tower. It was savory, vinegary, smooth and creamy, sweet, tart and more in bites that picked up all the ingredients.

The entree was similarly a tower of contrasting and complementary ingredients that pleased the taste buds with every bite.
Robert had the Prosciutto Wrapped Scallops.
There were carrots, peas, micro-greens and fingerling potatoes atop the scallops and all this rested in a puree of peas. Robert is not overly fond of peas, but he certainly cleaned his plate.
I don't know that there was a specific name for my entree. Unfortunately, the colors in the photo are not nearly so intense as they were in person, but it was a beautiful dish.
Bits of lettuce and mushrooms toppled off the grilled fennel and polenta into a pool of veggie puree that I thought was pea until I saw that Robert's English pea emulsion was much more intensely green. At any rate, I loved the blend of flavors and textures. the fennel offered a slightly licorice flavor, the mushrooms were tiny bursts of earthiness and the polenta was amazingly creamy but with a crisp crust. I don't have a list of all the ingredients, but whatever they were, they went together quite well.
I could have been quite content after the two courses, but a birthday dinner requires dessert!
My first choice would have been the cheese plate with apple beignet. honey-orange marmalade and petite radish salad, but the cheese, Vendeen Bichonne, is made with animal rennet. My second choice, the warm vanilla crepes, was delightful!
Those little dots and swirls around the outside of the plate tasted like a balsamic reduction. There were lovely chewy pistachios on top of the whipped marscapone cheese. It was a lovely birthday dessert in it's strawberry-rhubarb sauce.
Robert loved his chocolate cake.
I had a nibble of the peanut brittle in the salted caramel sauce. I loved salted caramels the first time I had them, but I am getting tired of seeing the combination everywhere. Robert thought the sauce and peanut brittle set off the intense chocolate in the flourless chocolate cake.
The owners of this restaurant label their food as comfort food. It certainly is comforting and comfortable, but it has a level of sophistication that goes far beyond what one would normally consider comfort food. If comfort food is the kind of food your mother made, this is comfort food if your Mom was one of the Food and Wine Best New Chefs.
I know that we will not wait for a special occasion to visit Fruition again!

I love the Olympics!

There is a reason I don't blog about sports -- I'm hopeless. I wore bifocals starting in kindergarten, so I was the last kid chosen for any athletic team. Yet, I love the Olympics! I am in awe of the talent collected in one place. For the most part, the Olympics we see as spectators is the epitome of sportsmanship. Yeah, the Russian figure skater bad-mouthed the US win, but, hey, that's left over from the cold war. Usually, when a skier goes down, there are many countries represented in the group rushing to help. The Olympics bring out the best of international relations and remind us of what the world could be.
In terms of the sports, I cannot imagine being competent at most of the sports. I know Courtney Zablocki who finished fourth in luge in Torino and I know how hard she works and how easily she is injured. I simply cannot even imagine being able to do what she does. I stood at the top of the ski jump hill in Park City and I got dizzy standing there, never mind sliding down the hill with the intention of jumping 1 centimeter, let alone 100 meters or whatever distance they fly through the air.
There is one event even we couch potatoes can relate to -- curling! At the moment, I am watching the American women lose miserably to the Canadians, but I can relate to this sport. These women are "real" women -- sizes 12 and 14 are represented. There are little rolls around the waists, thick thighs, hips, even arms that don't even hint at muscles, all the less attractive aspects of our physical selves are visible on the athletes in this sport. If we concentrate, we can see the strategy. Granted, seeing the strategy and actually placing the rock where one wants are two completely different things. This sport is bocce on ice with a few extra twists. The strategy is not unlike pool -- place your rocks where you want them while knocking your opponent's rocks out of play. The catch is that the cue is a human sliding on ice without benefit of skates. I'm not saying I could master the sport of curling, but I can imagine not embarrassing myself in the sport. It is good to have a sport where a mere mortal can imagine some success.
I love the Olympics! There are times to dream the impossible dream and times to imagine our own participation. Most important of all, the predominant theme is one of peaceful competition. And that is a theme that we can dream would predominate even when the Olympic torch is no longer visible.

This is the place for seafood in Las Vegas

When the Sampsons and the Eichenwalds do anything together, one of the major components of the planning process involves food. Our excursion to The Lion King was no exception. The discussion began almost as soon as we got the tickets. Now, where shall we eat? Because the show was at the Mandalay Bay, it made sense to eat in that facility. We read reviews, we asked people, we tried to look at menus to assure that I could find something to eat there. We heard a lot about RM Seafood. Interestingly, after the show, Thom Smesma (Scar in The Lion King) suggested RM Seafood if we were looking for a good place to eat. Ahhhh.... even I can eat at RM Seafood. Actually, I can eat quite nicely at RM Seafood!
Our waiter was George and he was quite a personable sort. We had a fun bread basket of little biscuits and cornmeal muffins. Very homey! That bread basket set the tone for a meal that was comfortable, with food that was simple in that there were no fancy sauces and complex gimmicks, and with no pretensions.

Robert and I chose Hawaiian Walu which was served with broccoli and little bits of puffed rice in a shitake-dashi broth with shitakes on top as well.
The firm-fleshed, mild fish had a little top crust formed with a soy glaze and run under the broiler. This was a dish created with a lovely light hand. The fish was the star of the dish and there was nothing to compete with it. The veggies and broth came along to add their unique flavor perspectives and it was truly enjoyable and comfortable food.
Sonia and Howard chose Diver Scallops. I tried just a tiny taste of the accompanying cauliflower gratin in which the cauliflower was clearly the point of the dish, not the sauce. The scallops sat on a golden raisin emulsion.
Chef Moonen used couscous as a crust on the scallops and we all marveled at such an interesting idea. Again, the theme of this dish was the simplicity that featured the fish.
The four of us agreed on a lovely Austrian Gruner Veltliner. It had a nice minerality that complimented both scallops and Walu. I am kicking myself for not recording or remembering more than the grape because I would certainly buy a few bottles when I get home. I have a vague picture of the label in my head and I hope it will serve me when I go looking for this wine. When George served the wine, we had a little conversation about the screw-top and its increasing use in the fine wine industry. George proudly pointed out that the screw-top fit well with the restaurant's policy of sustainability.
It is my habit, following a couple of times when I forgot major features of my food before I sat down to blog as I did just now when I forgot the vintner for our wine, to admit that I am a food blogger and ask for a menu to help me get things right on the blog, to admit I am a food blogger and request a paper menu to take with me. George jumped on it. He even introduced us to Rick Moonen, the man whose initials provide the name of the restaurant. He graciously discussed with us his concept in using a couscous crust for the scallops and generally answered our questions about the meal. He even agreed to pose with me for the picture below. Chef Moonen is getting a bit of national attention, so plan accordingly!
If you are in Las Vagas and looking for a superior seafood dinner, don't hesitate -- head to the Mandalay Bay and RM Seafood. It is just outside the casino in the Mandalay Marketplace for the more casual dining (about $50 a person) where we ate or up the escalators to the more formal version (around $95 a person). The official website tells me upstairs is RM Seafood and downstairs is RM Casual. Phone is 702-632-9300.

Spago Las Vegas Style

One of the amazing things in Las Vegas is that, no matter when you want to eat, the restaurants are packed. Our best choice at the Forum was Spago. We were too hungry to wait for one of the choice tables that project into the mall and allow one to see the storm come in and the statues move. the large back room was farther from the crowd and a pleasant break from the noise and crowds that are a fact of life around the Strip.
The meal started with a lovely selection of breads, all of which were good, but the crispbreads were exceptional. The bread disappeared fast, but I caught a picture of the accompaniments -- salt, butter and rosemary-infused oil.
In fact the breads went so fast, we had to ask for a second go around to be sure they were as good as we thought and not "good because we are so hungry."
It required quick photography with my new 'Droid to get shots of the meals before they were devoured. That was particularly true of my friend, Howard, with his pancetta-wrapped meatloaf
on a base of potato puree, mushroom gravy and port wine sauce and topped with three lovely onion rings.
Sonia grew up on Lake Como, so she knows from Bolognaise. She pronounced her Pappardelle a la Bolognaise very good. The menu described braised beef, roasted double blanched garlic, plum tomatoes, house-made Ricotta and Italian parsley.
Robert ordered the mesquite grilled Snake River Farm Kobe Beef Burger which he pronounced some of the "smoothest" beef he ever ate.
I nibbled some of the pommes frites which were, I promise you, some of the best fries I have ever eaten. Dusted with parsley and just the right amount of salt, they were absolutely the perfect level of crispness.
I had hand-cut fettuccini with mushrooms, peas, and glazed shallots.
What sounded innocuous in the menu, glazed shallots, turned out to be glorious -- shallots glazed in a lovely balsamic vinegar reduction that changed what could have been a somewhat ho-hum pasta dish in to a flavor explosion. In fact, about half of that lovely pasta is in the refrigerator, so, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll enjoy it again.

Robert's Apple Pie, as promised

Here is a picture of what is left of the pie my husband made for last night's celebration. My first picture post from my Droid! Many more to come, I promise!

New Year Day with a last Christmas Dinner

We have friends with whom we have come to a tradition of sharing Christmas. This year they were in Detroit on Christmas, so we postponed our celebration to New Year's Day. I had the best of intentions to try out my new Droid to take pictures and post to this site, but I just plain forgot to take pictures. Some meals are hectic that way. Seems like everything is done at the last possible moment and it is just too chaotic to remember to take pictures.
We did have a lovely meal though. I have no idea why a bunch of carnivores expect a vegetarian to prepare their meat, but I did an admirable Baron of Beef Roast and I really wish I had a picture to remember how gorgeous it was (for meat). I baked it with potatoes and carrots which took far longer to cook than I anticipated. They looked spectacular, but I understand they were a bit more chewy than is optimal. For myself, I decided I need all the luck I can get in 2010, so I did a bit of a mirapoix to which I added the black-eyed peas and some vegetable broth. I added just a touch of wine after everything was nicely done and stirred in a bit of Boursin to make the sauce. This was served over rice. Wouldn't you know that the people who poo-poo'd the idea of black-eyed peas, saying they are tasteless and not suitable for polite company begged to taste my concoction. The black-eyed peas on rice were a big hit. Our friends made individual frozen fruit salads that would have been lovely desserts -- lots of coconut, marshmallow and whipped cream.
But we had dessert planned and it was not to be missed! Years ago, when we bought our first microwave -- an Amanda RadarRange, microwaves were so new and unique that they offered six classes on how to use a microwave. One of the recipes we were taught was one for microwave Apple Pie and my husband took it on as his specialty. He hadn't made one in 10 or 15 years, but he dusted off the old recipe for our Christmas dinner and repeated it this evening for our Christmas/New Year celebration. I'll take a picture of the half that is left with my Droid and post it here in the morning!
Here's wishing all my readers, friends and families a very blessed and happy New Year!