Recession Recipes

I went to the farmers’ market by our house today to stock up on our weekly produce and the strawberry guy was back with a stand after being gone for a few months. Yes, it was 70 degrees and sunny today in Las Vegas, but strawberry season at the beginning of March? It just seems [...]

Every week or so, I get a phone call or text message from my little brother Andrew asking for some kind of cooking advice. His questions have run the gamut from how to roast chiles in his electric oven to what he should make for lunch. I do think one of my favourite phone calls [...]

We had a couple of friends over on Sunday night to try out a few recipes from the cookbook Tacos that Carlo got for Christmas. We started off the night with chips, salsa, our friend Mike’s great guacamole, and this queso recipe. We ended up eating so much of the appetizers that all of us [...]

We are big fans of food writer Fiona Beckett, so when we saw on her blog that she was having The Ultimate Macaroni Cheese Challenge, we knew we had to enter. I guess it’s all of the Spanish food we’ve been making and thinking about lately, so independently we both came up with a similar [...]

The simple things can often be some of the best. When in Catalunya, the part of Spain that holds Barcelona, this holds true for the well-known pan con tomate (or pa amb tomaquet in Catalan). It’s simply toasted bread rubbed with a clove of raw garlic and a tomato, then salted — and it’s the [...]

I really enjoy a good salad. Meat is an easy way to bulk up a salad, but another trick is adding roasted butternut squash as a topping. It adds a nice sweetness to your salad, as well as some beautiful colour and perhaps more importantly, another way to squeeze in an extra serving of vegetables.
In [...]

Every Tuesday this fall, the Whole Foods in Town Square (where the contestants did all of their shopping on Top Chef Las Vegas) has been hosting cooking classes taught by different chefs from the Wynn and Encore resorts. I have been to quite a few of them, but perhaps my favourite cooking class was taught [...]

In addition to the incredible Potato Puree we ate at Craftsteak a couple of weeks ago, we also had the most divine Brussels Sprouts with Bordelaise Sauce and Bacon. They tasted like a meat dish despite being veggie-based due to the rich wine sauce and bacon, which as you know makes everything exponentially more delicious.
Carlo [...]

I love Brussels sprouts, and I always look forward to eating them at the holidays each year. Normally they are kind of a pain to make and seem to take forever to prepare and roast, which is why we seem to only eat them at the holidays. However, this recipe from Mark Bittman is very [...]

Last year Carlo and I went to Tom Colicchio’s Craftsteak at MGM and ordered their seasonal tasting menu. The dinner one of the best meals I’ve had in a fancy restaurant on the Strip, and what you would imagine the food would taste like if you are a big fan of Tom on Top Chef.
While [...]