Hell’s Kitchen & Crispy Skin Salmon

Hell's Kitchen & Crispy Skin Salmon

Gordon Ramsay Hell’s Kitchen Las Vegas
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
And His Crispy Skin Salmon Dish

Gordon Ramsay made a surprise visit to Hell’s Kitchen at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the restaurant, which was the first of his six Hells.

We were there, but unfortunately just missed him by exactly one week! The one word we used to describe our lunch at Hell’s Kitchen was FUN! It was super enjoyable from the buzzing energy, to the studio-set atmosphere with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Strip, to the relaxed yet experienced service, and it felt like the guests were all there to have a good time, too. And we enjoyed the crispy skin salmon dish so much, that I decided to re-create it at home.

Hell’s Kitchen in Vegas is on track to hit $55 million in annual sales, Ramsay said, a figure that places it among the highest-grossing independent restaurants in the world. The 300+ seat restaurant is open more than 12 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year. Just like casinos, Ramsay staffs Hell’s Kitchen in three eight-hour shifts. In fact, there’s a team dedicated to making Wellingtons throughout the night. (from Las Vegas Review-Journal here)

Hell's Kitchen & Crispy Skin Salmon

Hell's Kitchen & Crispy Skin Salmon

🔥 Hell’s Kitchen Las Vegas 🔥

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Camarones con Rajas

Camarones con Rajas

Camarones con Rajas

Don’t get me wrong. We thoroughly enjoyed our lunch at Javier’s in Las Vegas, but I simply wanted to serve the dish with more shrimp, and more rajas! So here I re-create a version of that fabulous Camarones con Rajas at home. It’s overloaded with succulent Alaska spot shrimp atop poblano chile strips and onions smothered in a garlic butter cream sauce.

Rajas con crema is a popular Mexican dish consisting of strips or slices (rajas in Spanish) of roasted poblano peppers in a cream sauce.

At Javier’s, we dined on aguachile del rey with bay scallop, shrimp, and octopus; empanadas de camarón; chile verde with braised pork and tomatillo sauce; and the camarones con rajas – all accompanied by their hand-shaken signature margaritas. This stunning upscale Mexican restaurant is located in the Aria Resort right next to the casino floor where hundreds of rope strands form an impressive canopy in the bar area.

Javier's Las Vegas
Javier’s dishes with Camarones con Rajas (top right)

While Javier’s prepares their dish with Mexican white prawns, I am elevating my dish with Alaska spot shrimp.

Alaska Spot Shrimp are sweet and plump. And if cooked correctly, they are luscious and much more tender than the Mexican prawn variety. With their slightly briny hint of the sea, spot shrimp taste like a sweet-buttery cross between lobster and Dungeness crab. They are just heavenly served over the poblano garlic butter cream.

Receta de Camarones Con Rajas

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Crème de Tomates en Croûte

Cream of Tomato Soup in Puff Pastry

Crème de Tomates en Croûte
🍅 🍅 🍅
Cream of Tomato Soup in Puff Pastry

Crème de Tomates en Croûte is a jaunty soup inspired by Bistro Jeanty, a charming French restaurant in Yountville, CA. Warm spices and smoky chiles elevate my humble tomato soup recipe. Crowned with a golden dome of  buttery-flaky puff pastry…this is an elegant, yet easy first course for a dinner party or perhaps even Valentine’s Day?

Recette de Crème de Tomates en Croûte

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Jacques Pépin’s Salade à la Crème and Limited Edition Signed Print

Jacques Pépin's Salade à la Crème and Limited Edition Signed Print

Jacques Pépin’s Salade à la Crème
and
His Limited-Edition Signed Print Called
“Roses”

In another one of his ever-charming Facebook videos taped in the kitchen of his Connecticut home, Jacques Pépin prepares a simple salad in the style of his maman, using cream instead of oil for the dressing. In it he makes the point that many are alarmed by using cream, but he notes that oil is actually much higher in calories… It reminded me of a hilarious and now famous quote by his meilleure amie, Julia Child, “If you’re afraid of butter, use cream.”

The salad is delightful in an old-fashioned French way, and since the dressing is very simple, I like to serve interesting salad greens with it. These were Radicchio, Petite Red Oak, Green Tango, Green and Red Little Gem.

Jacques began painting in the 1960s when he moved to New York City to work in the restaurant business. He enrolled at Columbia University to improve his language skills and also signed up for an elective in painting.

On The Artistry of Jacques Pépin, he offers some of his original artwork and signed, fine-art prints for sale. A portion of sales go to support culinary education and sustainability.

Inspired by the Chef/Artist, I decided to photograph the salad in the style of a still life painting with roses, including one of his pieces from my growing collection.

Jacques Pépin's Salade à la Crème and Limited Edition Signed Print

Jacques’s Salade à la Crème Recipe

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Chilean Sea Bass a la Veracruzana

Chilean Sea Bass a la Veracruzana

Chilean Sea Bass a la Veracruzana

Decades ago, I prepared Chilean Sea Bass a la Veracruzana at our home for an important business dinner party for 14 colleagues. The meal turned out to be a super success. But not because I was a stellar cook back then, but because rich, melt-in-the-mouth Chilean Sea Bass aka Patagonian Toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides) is simply delicious and almost impossible to overcook due to its flesh high fat content.

The pan sauce was a heavenly combination of olive oil, fish juices, lime juices, chicken stock, garlic, bay and oregano. The tomatoes, olives, capers, and jalapeño complemented the fish with flavors from the Mediterranean along with a Mexican-style pizzazz.

Prior to the 1990s, we had never heard of Chilean Sea Bass. But once it started showing up on restaurant menus, it became a culinary darling. Thanks to that and basically good ol’ luck, I chose Sea Bass Veracruz for my evening’s main course…

Ha! Well, now with many years of cooking under my toque, guess what? My recipe is not much different than the one from a long time ago.

Populations went from sustainable, to overfished, and now back to sustainable again according to the Marine Stewardship Council. And although the fish I am using is called “Chilean” it is actually a product of Australia, fished in the Southern Ocean. It has met the global standard for sustainability where there are enough fish left in the sea to reproduce indefinitely.

So it’s high time to resurrect that Sea Bass Veracruz recipe!

Chilean Sea Bass a la Veracruzana

Sea Bass Veracruz Recipe

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