Eating Vegas and Other News

A bag full of goodies!

Wow, it's actually been quite a while since my last post...Well I was basically computer-less last week because of a Vegas trip I took with my boyfriend and another couple. It was a pretty awesome trip since I haven't been there for about 8 years?

We got into Vegas in the evening last Monday, we checked in at Tahiti Village, and took a dip in the really awesome lazy river! We decided to go out for food a little after 9:30, first we though we'd check out the restaurant at the place called Tahiti Joe's. But apparently they were closing at 10, so we didn't get in. Tummies grumbling we decided to hit the Strip, of course being the foodie that I am I did plenty of research for which restaurants I we should check out. We were craving burgers so we went to the Burger Bar at Mandalay Bay. Sorry about the blurry pictures! It was kind of dim in there and I didn't want to take a picture with flash because I didn't want people to stare..haha..So here is what me and the bf ordered.

Some kind of burger my bf created with Kobe beef
and a side of sweet potato fries.


I got the sliders that were kind of like samplers of their
larger burgers with a side of skinny fries.

The Verdict: The sliders were so cuuuuute, but they were um..... blah, I don't think I'd order them again. The fries were really good when they came out hot, but after a few minutes, they were cold and hard. Maybe I didn't eat them fast enough? The buns for the sliders were not enjoyable, they seemed stale, or just too hard for a hamburger bun. However, the beef was cooked to a perfect medium rare. I wish I ordered a full size burger, just because I had a bite of my bf's. The bun was waaaay different and it was pretty good. Sweet potato fries were awesome too! I forgot what kind of sauce that was on the side though...but I know it was good.

I was dying to visit a Vegas buffet before the trip, but I don't think we were hungry enough for it on Tuesday. So instead for lunch we went to Earl of Sandwich at Planet Hollywood. And I couldn't have been more satisfied. And I knoooow, I probably should have taken a picture of the sandwich without the wrapper. Haha..but I was too excited to try the gorgeous looking sandwich.

Possibly the World's Greatest Hot Sandwich!

The Verdict: Despite the fact that I first ordered a BLT, which the cashier told me they ran out of, I had to make a quick decision because the line was growing pretty fast, I got the Earl's Club..and WOW was all I had to say when I took that first bite. I couldn't be happier that they ran out of BLT's. The bread was amazingly thick, yet soft, the combination of Roasted Turkey, Smoked Bacon, Swiss Cheese, Lettuce, Roma Tomato & Sandwich Sauce was perfect. But I was kind of confused though, the sandwich I had had all the components to make a BLT, so what was the deal? Do they make these sandwiches ahead of time and keep them under a lamp? I mean that would explain the really cool looking gold wrapper that also retains heat well. Ehh, the sandwich was still good but I just want to knooooooow! Oh yes, I also got some lightly salted kettle chips that were nothing too special, but always good with a sandwich. Definitely one of the best stops for great food at a great price on the Strip. I think the sandwiches are about $6 or $7.

Hmmm..I'm having a hard time remembering what we had for dinner that night. What I do remember is that we went to Chipotle one night for dinner, I just don't remember when that was! And I don't have any pictures of any dinners. So let's skip the day by day game play.

We went to The Wynn for lunch at The Buffet one of those days. I was pretty impressed with all the choices and the flavors. This buffet was no Sizzlers!

A tiny sample of what was offered for lunch.

Some desserts!

The Verdict: Choices were plentiful indeed! Possibly enough to please a variety of tastes. I had some chicken tortilla soup, a chunk of parmesan with parma ham (?) and good brown bread, grilled veggie salad, macaroni salad, scallop ceviche, gnocchi with peas and pancetta, pulled pork on a piece of cornbread with coleslaw(pork was too sweet for my taste), a tri tip slider (too fatty), some kind of fish with tomatoes, Thai beef salad (wasn't good at all, flavors weren't there and beef was tough), and bbq pork char siu bao. Desserts included lemon tart (awesome of course!), some kind of chocolate and banana thing that was pretty good too, chocolate dream tart ? (was soooooo gooood, great mix of something crunchy on the bottom, creamy chocolate mousse? ganache? with a candied hazelnut - YUM. So maybe I had too much chocolate, but that chocolate mousse or pudding in that tiny cup wasn't too interesting.

Bouchon. Amazing, definitely amazing. And interestingly enough, we found this place when we were on our way to get our tickets for Phantom: The Las Vegas Spectacular. Which is an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G show, if you are in Vegas, you NEED to go see it!! Get same day half price tickets through Tix4Tonight! I heard of Bouchon while I was still in NorCal, I came across it when I researching for places to go to in SF. Sadly their Northern California location was too out of the way for us. It's in Yountville (a city I never heard of until I came across Bouchon) near Napa. So I only have the pictures of the macarons that we bought because we saved those for last. Other goodies we bought and inhaled included their famous chocolate bouchon (kind of like a brownie), almond financier, pain au chocolat, chocolate and almond croissant, and raspberry jam filled beignets. Everything was amazing, I only wish I could have sampled every single thing there!! However, the lemon macaron was too sweet, raspberry and chocolate macarons were amazing!

Raspberry Macaron.


Lemon Macaron.


Chocolate Macaron.

And so the last place I have to review is Stripburger. I ordered some tomato gazpacho, a classic hamburger with garlic fries and a Sunburn Sangria. The burger and fries were perfect. The sangria wasn't actually a sangria, it didn't have any wine. It tasted like strawberry Torani mixed with vodka and lime soda.

As if this post wasn't long enough already, I need to mention that I saw Julie & Julia this past Friday...along with a bunch of other foodies of course! I loved it! I'll probably be looking into getting my hands on the dvd! That movie is sooooo drool worthy!! I was starving by the end...or just really wanting some French food. I have never wanted to cook French food so much as I do now, especially Boeuf Bourguignon!! But I don't have a Dutch Oven...and I really want to use Julia Child's recipe! I know I'm going to buy one someday, but I'm saving up for a new computer right now, I know I want a Le Creuset, but I need money!! Haha...so does anyone have a recipe that doesn't require a Dutch Oven?!

My sister's wedding cake planning has gotten nowhere since I took a whole week off vacationing. But there a few recipes that I want to try out, but I might not get to that until later in the week since that's when she'll be dropping by. But yes, I'm still a little scared!

The Macaron Post

So I decided to write about macarons because I have never been so frustrated in my life with baking something correctly/perfectly! I'm sure like many others I toiled in the kitchen trying out numerous recipes. So far, I think I've made them about 7 or 8 times. Sometimes they came out beautifully and other times just WRONG. Maybe it's the perfectionist in me, but I just couldn't give up, I had to get it right.

Before I even dreamed about making them, I studied more pictures of macarons than I can count. I noticed that macarons came in different shapes, sizes, colors, with shiny domes or opaque domes, and with large feet or tiny feet - and sometimes no feet at all. I didn't realize how obsessed I became with the macaron..I was drawing them in my notes during my art history lectures and I had a good 10 or so bookmarks of different recipes. I was so scared to even begin making them, somehow I knew they were going to come out wrong the first time.

So my first attempt was in April of this year, when I went home to SoCal for spring break. I told myself that I didn't have all the necessary equipment to make them at the house I was living in while going to school in NorCal. So when I got home I made sure I had enough egg whites (that I had to age), confectioner's sugar, and parchment paper. I had to go buy almond flour/meal.So the first recipe I tried out was David Lebovitz's French Chocolate Macaron recipe. I don't know why I chose it...maybe it had to do with all the pictures on his flickr that made me fall in love with his website. So the recipe can be found on his site here.

Do make sure to read his post, I found it really entertaining and helpful. There's also a link at the very bottom, "Making French Macarons" - if you're a first timer, read it!!! I also decided that I would fill my first batch of macarons with Salty Peanut Butter Filling from Cannelle et Vanille.
For some reason, even though I can never get enough of chocolate, I thought chocolate macarons with chocolate ganache would be too sweet. So are you dying to see the picture now? Of my horrible mess of a macaron that I'm kind of embarrased to show?

Attempt #1

So what went wrong? I knew they weren't going to come out perfect on the first try! But there are SOOOO many factors that could have messed it up:

• my almond meal wasn't fine enough
• I didn't age my egg whites long enough (even though this may or may not work)
• I used the wrong piping tip
• I piped it wrong
• I used Hershey's cocoa powder rather than Dutch-processed
• I over-whipped my egg whites

Nonetheless, they tasted great. Chocolate and salty peanut butter are a great match of sweet, salty, and nutty. But I did try DL's chocolate ganache recipe for the rest of my macarons.

However, since I made these all in one day and quite a while ago, I really don't remember the order of all of them quite right...I'll do my best.

Attempt #2

These were made from pistachios instead of the usual almond. I bought whole, shelled, unsalted pistachios. I ground them myself. I learned that the food processor at home was not capable of making a fine powder. So I sat in my kitchen with a mortar and pestle trying to grind them as much as I could. Haha, I was so frustrated...it took forever!! I thought they came out better than the last batch, but they had really big feet! And I also topped them with pictachios because I thought they'd look much cuter :) For these I think I used Tartelette's recipe, I didn't have any powdered food coloring though, so they didn't come out that cute shade of green. In this attempt I learned to not over-whip my whites!! They need to be glossy instead of stiff!! But I did over-whip these a bit, they aren't that smooth.

Attempt #3

I was hoping that these would come out like #2, but they really didn't...I wen't back to DL's recipe, but probably over-whipped again! And I definitely didn't pipe them out correctly either. I was kinda sad, but happy at the same time because some of them had feet, even though they were teeny tiny ones.

Attempt #4

Finally, I didn't over-whip my whites the 4th time around. I had a good feeling about this batch when the batter came together beautifully. I was already smiling when I added the almonds in, gave it a few stirs, and told myself, "This is it!! It's flowing like magma!!" I was extremely excited!! As you can tell, the batter is really glossy, and at the time really liquidy, but stable enough to not turn into a flat blob. I put them in the oven and got these:

I was pretty satisfied, I did it! Or somewhat close, the last picture shows some tiny ones that were part of the same batch. But I baked them on the second level of the oven instead of the first (because there was a tray on the first level). With the oven at home I realized that I could only bake one tray at a time for some weird reason.

Attempt #'s 5, 6, and 7

After I came back to school after Spring Break, I still had macarons on the brain. I gave myself an excuse to make them again and again. I wanted to make these for Easter, since I was going to Easter Dinner with my boyfriend's family. I thought, "what better way to impress them?!" So I made three batches, two of them chocolate with chocolate and nutella filling (one had more cocoa than the other in the cookie batter) and a yellow cookie with lemon buttercream. These didn't come out perfect, but pretty close. But they did taste wonderful!

Attempt #8 (blue ones)

After the success of the yellow macarons, that I colored with liquid food coloring, I decided why not try a darker color? I wanted blue, a deep blue, maybe even a little close to turqouise..like ones that I saw so long ago. I knew it was going to take A LOT of food coloring to get that shade, and that adding THAT much liquid would probably be bad for the batter, so I used a tip from Use Real Butter's Strawberry Macaron. She dyed her sugar with food coloring! Brilliant! But I can be quite the impatient person at times. I don't think I let the sugar dry long enough, and since I wanted a brighter hue, I also added more food coloring to the batter after the dyed sugar. Bad bad me!!

I didn't think the batter's consistency changed much when I piped it out. I baked them and most of them came out quite nice. But I noticed that a lot of them had there bottoms stuck to the paper :( I was hopeful, I made some chocolate ganache, and sampled one. They were sooooo soooo sooooo wrong! The texture of the cookie was horrible, they were too fragile, had hollow insides, and they were a little wet inside too! I was disappointed, but they still made for beautiful pictures at least! Oh, I also decided to put poppy seeds on a few of them because I had them lying around, leftover from lemon poppyseed muffins.

This is it for my macaron post! It's quite lengthy but I don't feel like I hit all the points with the different recipes I tried...Hmmm, maybe I'll post more tips when I decide to make macarons again...

THE END