century city

so i'm sitting here in a hotel room in century city, los angeles.  as i understand it, cc is sandwiched between the beach of santa monica and the glamour of beverly hills.  i am writing my recipes for tomorrow's cooking demonstration at bloomingdale's.  i am representing the colorado tourism office along with chef mark fischer of restaurant six89 and phat thai, both in carbondale.  we are going to cook some food and extoll the virtues of living in beautiful colorado.  our mission:  feed the shoppers and convince them to take a vacation to colorado.  i am doing a cold plate of haystack aspen ash cheese with ciolo artichoke tapenade, beets, crostini and burnt orange-balsamic dressing and a hot plate of colorado's best beef sirloin with miso glaze, san luis fingerling potatoes, hazel dell mushrooms, and a ginger-red wine reduction.  i'm hoping that chef fischer and i do something worthy of the mission bestowed upon us.  i think we will.  i'm excited to see how well i can make 200 portions of food using four electric burners and a toaster oven.  the nice part is that we are smack dab in the middle of the housewares department and have free reign on any equipment/wares we want to take off the shelf and dirty up.  i think i might need to use that brand new blender....

this morning i was on the "what's cookin" show on crn (cable radio network) and i spoke with michael horn and paul stern.  we discussed top chef, bloomingdale's, jax, colorado, and my travels.  they were really fun to talk to and invited me back.  

tomorrow morning before the demo, i'm going to be recording a spot for "good food" which will air soon on npr.  i'm not sure when it will air, but i will certainly let everyone know when i figure it out.

i'm also trying to write down some recipes for the kentucky derby.  that is happening this weekend, may 2nd to be precise, and the top chef tour will be there.  i am doing several cooking demos with stefanie izard and stean richter.  i think we are all going to have a ton of fun and i can't wait to see what the derby is like in person.  i was told to dress up, so i bought a pink shirt.  cool, right?  according to the producers, stefan and i will be doing a live demo for the today show on saturday morning, a live demo for nbc sports that afternoon, and stefanie and i will be doing a bravo special event on friday evening.  i just hope that i can pull off some kentucky-ish food and fool the audience into believing that i grew up on that stuff...