Flavors del Giorno - Valentino Restaurant Travel Video duration – 6.42 minutes Valentino Las Vegas Venetian, Las Vegas, USA Travel Video Gourmet – Regionale Luciano Pellegrini Executive Chef, Las Vegas Well here we are at the Valentino restaurant at the Venetian on Las Vegas Strip in fabulous Las Vegas. This room that I’m sitting at is called the Chef table. This is where we keep our collection of recipe books and where I come to get inspired. The original Valentino opened in Santa Monica back in the mid 70s. We were asked to bring the Valentino brand to Las Vegas ten years ago by the Venetian brass that thought we were doing a good job with Italian food and we have been here in Las Vegas since July of 1999. Our philosophy actually embraces two concepts. We do have a casual dining room where we offer a trattoria style menu. We also then have a fine dining room that is more contemporary but for both concepts, definitely the freshness of ingredients and simplicity of recipes and that’s where we stand. Today we are going to make a couple of dishes. We are going to make some lamb chops with roasted potatoes in Vincotto sauce and some tagliolini stuffed lobster pasta with a lobster sauce. So first and foremost we are going to actually put the lamb on a pan. We are going to season our nice lamb chops with a little salt and pepper and we actually add some mint leaves there for flavoring as well and I find that by adding a little butter to the pan alongside with any oil will actually help prevent any protein - meat, or fish or whatever stick to the pan even though you’re not using a non-stick pan. Over here we are going to do the same thing for our potatoes. Our potatoes have been cut into wedges and actually baked in the oven for about 20 minutes. I’m actually going to pop them on to the broiler so they get a nice brown color. I’m going to cut my fresh pasta into squares and then I’m going to take this brush with a little bit of water and I brush the pasta so that it’s nice and wet and eventually becomes sticky. Then I put a dollop of lobster stuffing and then I’m going to lift up the pasta at the corner and then again and then again until I get a nice square shaped little purse. Here for the sauce, we are going to put some butter and add some sliced garlic that has been previously roasted. I’m going to add my lobster and fresh dill to the pan. Believe it or not, I’m going to add a little bit of curry. I love curry, for some uses at least. So I’m going to shake this a little more, add a little bit of marinara sauce, a little bit of cream. This is a party favorite, I’m going to add some brandy to the pan and voila… Vincotto is a great must. In this particular case it is flavored with raspberry, it goes great with any meat, fish or anything you really want so you can actually compare vincotto to a thick balsamic vinegar. Now believe it or not, the sauce is ready. It was that easy. And we cover the bottom of the plate with a nice cream sauce. We put my lobster tail right in the middle and the rest of the meat as well. My pasta is actually ready and I’m going to put it into the pan so I’m not putting the pasta into the sauce because I want the nice black and yellow of the pasta shining through and then I’m going to put little purses all around the plate. Look at that, a little drizzle of olive oil. Oh beautiful, by now our lamb has become nice and medium rare and a nice vertical presentation here of both and there, the potatoes so the sauce will retain a little bit of acidity…it should cut very nicely into the graininess of the lamb, a little bit of the chive just for color for this presentation and there you have it. In today’s special, we have lobster stuffed purses with a lobster marinara cream and curry sauce and pan roasted lamb chops with roasted potatoes in a raspberry vincotto sauce. Enjoy bon appetite. As far as our customers that come here at Valentino and dine regardless of whether they go to the casual dining or fine dining, we want them to leave with a feeling of having had a great experience. We’re not your neighborhood Italian restaurant, we might actually try new dishes, we might try old dishes that would look like new to you so just all of it is service to the umpteenth degree.