After all the cooking and cleaning and cooking some more during the Christmas season, going out to breakfast after Christmas sounded wonderful.

The Bagel Café has been a New York type Deli institution (and a good one) as long as I’ve been in Las Vegas…which is over 13 years.   They’re on the West side of town, about 15 miles from the Strip.

It’s squeezed in a medical complex that houses doctors.   Parking’s a joke because everyone (seems like) in Vegas drives Escalades and Ford F-250’s and they try  to fit these big cars/trucks in Prius sized spaces.

Even if you’re not hungry, when you walk into The Bagel Café and the smell and sight of all this great food hits the senses—you’re immediately ready to eat.

I ordered the 2 oz smoked fish plate with Nova lox—no coffee because their coffee stinks (even though they boast about their gourmet freshly ground beans) with a jalapeno cheese bagel, toasted, and jalapeno cheddar cheese cream cheese.

Nova or Nova Scotia salmon, sometimes called Nova lox, is cured with a mild brine and then cold-smoked. Nova Lox is the opposite end of the scale from a smoked fish product.  It’s lightly salted, lightly smoked and very delicate.

I love this platter.  The bagel is toasted, the cream cheese is whipped and flavored, the vegetables are very fresh and the half sour pickles are delicious.

Vic ordered 2 eggs, 2 sausage patties, potatoes and a bagel.  Also coffee although he admitted his mistake after a couple of sips.

He said his eggs, sausage and garlic bagel were good, but the potatoes tasted boiled then heated on a grill.  Not very tasty.

As we were leaving we stopped by the take-out counter for some bagels, $10 for 14 ( a super-sized baker’s dozen) and pickled herring in sour cream/onion sauce.  Yum!

Sometimes, a desire for Chinese hits you. The soy sauce, the noodles, the pot stickers, the fortune cookies…. I’m not sure what triggers that craving, but only a visit to an authentic Chinese restaurant satisfies.

China MaMa in Las Vegas

This time the urge hit on Sunday and China MaMa on South Jones Ave. about 12 miles west of the Strip, came to mind. China MaMa occupies a vacant bank building which has been converted into a restaurant. But you can still tell what it was because the front door is under the bank’s drive thru teller area.

We got there about 1 PM, and the place was pretty empty.  Green tea was brought immediately with two menus, one for appetizers and one for entrees. Didn’t see any alcohol served but we all enjoyed the hot tea so we didn’t care.

Ordered the Chicken Corn Soup ($4.50 for the small which served three of us with some left over). It also was piping hot and slightly sweet with it’s pieces of corn and tender chicken in a creamy egg-drop base. Excellent.

Chicken Corn Soup

Next, the Green Onion Pancake ($4.75 and enough to amply serve all of us) was a layered crepe that was flavored with scallions and served with a dish of hoisin sauce. Flavor was good with crispy surfaces but not salty enough. I just dipped my portion in soy as I ate.

Green Onion Pancake

Pan Fried Pot Stickers (Gyoza) for $7.25 were nice & crispy on the bottom and chewy on top filled with a ginger/onion scented pork.

Potstickers

Kung Pao Chicken had tender chunks of chicken and lots and lots of peanuts in a highly seasoned Kung Pao sauce. Midly spicy and very good.

Kung Pao Chicken

The last dish was Fried Rice Cake with Fungi. Cooked rice that was smashed and rinsed in a colander then formed into a cake and cut into chunks (fat caterpillar size) that was stir fried with a mushroom( ear tree?) and green and hot peppers. It was tasty, it really was. But I had to leave most of it behind because it was so hot, it hurt. Flavor and fire.

Fried Rice Cake

So the dishes are generously sized, we had enough Kung Pao to take home and the food is authentic and delicious.  Also,  the menu is really  large for such a small place. More reason to return.

Tobi has been working hard for what seems like years, two sometimes three part-time jobs while finishing college at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV).  Well, she’s done.  Finished.  Got her degree and is ready to enter the field of education.

The Graduate

And last night her Mom & Dad threw a graduation party for her.

Teri (Mom) told me she was doing a Mexican buffet, and asked me to bring a salad if I wanted to help.  I have a recipe from allrecipes.com for California Salad Bowl, which I made about 5 years ago.  It was delicious as I remember.

First I made the avocado salad dressing:  1 avocado, 1 T. lemon, ½ C mayonnaise, some Siracha, ¼ C olive oil, 1 clove garlic and ½ t. salt.  My method?  I just put everything in the food processor and creamed it.

Avocado Dressing

I cleaned and dried two large heads of Romaine lettuce and tore them into pieces.

Romaine Lettuce

Then 6 oz. of Cheddar were shredded, 2 Roma tomatoes seeded and diced, and 3 green onions chopped.

Tomatos, Cheddar & Fritos

Everything was put into containers to take to the party and mixed there as salad, particularly, needs to be tossed at the last minute to taste fresh.   I also took several small bags of Fritos.

When we got to the party, Lisa & Hannah helped me mix the salad and get it on the buffet table.

The refried beans were particularly delicious, smooth and spicy.  Mark, Tobi’s Dad, cooked pork on the grill, sliced it and sauced it with a tomato sauce, which was great.  This besides various salads, tortillas, salsas, chips, rice etc.

Creamy Refried Beans

Grilled, sauced pork

The California Salad Bowl tasted of creamy avocado with a hot kick to it.  The Cheddar gave it a cheesy flavor and the Doritos gave it saltiness and crunch.  And it went so fast.  I went back for seconds and the bowl was empty.

Tobi’s Aunt Darleen who is a cake genius created the graduation cake.

For Tobi

So our favorite graduate was honored by everyone, had a great time at her own party and ‘felt the love’ from every person attending.  The kind of launching party that Tobi deserved.

I’ve been totally intrigued with Chef’s Academy.  It’s one of those reality cooking shows on the Bravo channel (of course).  Only this one’s even sleazier than Hell’s Kitchen.  The cheftestants include an platinum blonde Orange County housewife whose husband is a big game hunter (since when is a giraffe, big game?), a French porn star who’s changed his name—(like no one’s going to find out), and a Navy submarine cook.

The star is Jean Christophe Novelli, a Michelin award-winning chef with restaurants in London, France and South Africa, and voted “World’s Sexiest Chef” (who comes into town to run the school with his pregnant girlfriend).   Wow…I couldn’t have written a crazier cast of characters.

Having said that, I’m really interested in some of the food he demonstrates for his students on the show.  The chef cooked his Grandma Louise’s Tomato Sauce using a very different technique which made me want to try it.  All the more as the cheftestants ooo-ed and ahhh-ed over tastes of it.  Novelli has videos of the preparation on Bravo’s website if anyone wants to see it being made.

These are the ingredients used in the sauce.

Tomato & Basil with a supporting cast

I cut the Roma tomatoes in half and put them face down in a hot pan.  Added some salt & pepper, a pinch of sugar and a dash of vanilla along with a couple of sprigs of fresh thyme and 2 fresh bay leaves.  I let this cook for five minutes or so, then used a potato masher and gently mashed them so they would release their juices.  The heat was turned down to simmer and it cooked, uncovered for over an hour.

Simmering

Then I threw in about three whole cloves of garlic and some whole leaves of fresh basil and let it cook about 15 minutes more.  Olive oil was added next, about ½ cup and the whole thing simmered for 10 more minutes.

Basil & Garlic Added

Done.  Mixed with cooked pasta and served with a green salad, this was our dinner.

Ready to eat

I have to tell you—Chef Novelli’s Grandmother Louise knows her tomato sauce.  It was fantastic.  Surprising with the whole cloves of garlic and leaves of basil, but simply delicious.

My Mom came for a visit over the Thanksgiving holidays.  So a couple of days before Thanksgiving, we decided to go out to eat and asked Mom what she wanted to try.  Middle Eastern is her favorite and since she’s of Syrian descent, she knows good Arabic food.

Khoury's Mediterranean Restaurant

We decided on Khoury’s Mediterranean Restaurant.  It’s about 15 miles west of the strip, pretty close to our house and they freshly bake their pita bread in small batches so it’s always warm and soft.

Khoury's Open Oven

The restaurant felt good inside (it’s finally gotten cold in Las Vegas) because of the open oven which was periodically baking pita and pizza.  We were seated quickly and decided to have the House Mezza to share among us all.  Mom also wanted to try their lentil soup.

When the waitress starting bringing out the small plates of mezza, they ended up filling the table.

Along with the hot Pita Bread, we ate Tabulli, Hummus, Baba Ghanoush, Labni, Cheese Plate, Loubieh, Bamieh, Pickles and Olives, Fresh Vegetables, Foohl, Falafel, carrots & jalapeno, and the vegetarian stuffed grape leaves.

Mezza

Mezza

The Tabulli (or Tabouli) was fresh tasting  and heavy on the chopped green parsely.  Baba Ghanoush had a great roasted eggplant flavor and a creamy texture.

The dish of shaved carrots that you see in the picture, were tossed with jalapenos in an olive oil based dressing.  Sweet, spicy and refreshing.

The Foohl is (that brown dish in the picture) cooked, crushed Fava Beans dressed with garlic, olive oil and lemon juice—which is the Arabic cuisine’s version of the Holy Trinity.  Everything gets annointed with those three ingredients.  Foohl was just OK.  Tasted kind of heavy to me.

Mezze with tabouli & falafel in front

Falafel was hot, crisp and tasted good.  Mom said her lentil soup was delicious.  And of course all the mezze went beautifully with the pita bread, which we ate until we were stuffed.  That’s a great way to leave any restaurant.

Two of the friends that we’ve known the longest in Las Vegas have been going through some tough circumstances, and, I thought, needed some TLC in the form of a dinner party at our house.

Sometimes it helps just to know you have friends that love and care for you and want to see you happily distracted—at least for a few hours.

Welcoming Flowers

My Mother was in town from Florida and when I called my friend I told her that this was the reason that I wanted them to come to dinner.  Partially true, but not completely.

My brother & I grew up eating my Mother’s Spaghetti Casserole.  To this day I still crave it.  Just cooked spaghetti, ground beef and pork, Marinara sauce, cheese and an inner filling of sour cream, scallions and cottage cheese.  Put together like lasagna.  But like lasagna, the whole is more than the sum of it’s parts.  So, you’d better make sure the parts are top quality.

A Great Value

Mom's Spaghetti Casserole

I got a Sterling Vineyards Meritage for the dinner which is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec and Petit Verdot. This wine had flavors of cherry, berry and  chocolate and had a full, rich finish.  Since the Casserole had some heavy flavors I thought this wine would taste good and it did.  Best of all, it’s under $10 a bottle.  The only thing I’d probably do differently, is to open the wine before dinner to let it open up.  I noticed that it tasted better at the end of the dinner.

I had some Roasted Garlic Dressing from our Thanksgiving Dinner, so I made another salad with Romaine lettuce, sliced Granny Smith apple, blue cheese and toasted pecans.

Romaine, Blue Cheese, Pecans & Apples

Spaghetti Casserole cries out for Garlic Bread.  Which I made and wrapped in foil to put into the oven in the last 15 minutes of the casserole baking.

This is a heavy dinner, so I wanted the appetizer to be light.  I found an old recipe for stuffed mushrooms that are stuffed with olives, anchovy, cheese, lime juice, butter, soy sauce and are baked and served hot.

For dessert I made a favorite (of mine).  A pecan cranberry tart.  Just a pretty typical pecan pie that has fresh cranberries sprinkled liberally over it.  The tart flavor of the cranberries adds a refreshing note to the sweet pecan filling.

Ready to sit down

Getting to sit around the table, eating, drinking and catching up with our friends was the best part of the evening.

Yummy!