My Splendid Table has a wonderful, simple overview of how to make and use beurre monte, a workhorse sauce relied upon by such chefs as Thomas Keller and Tom Colicchio.

The page also shares Keller’s recipe for Sweet Potato Agnolotti with Sage Cream, Brown Butter, and Prosciutto which makes prominent use of the sauce.

(Wikipedia also has a good entry on beurre monte here.)

Here’s a few links to some recipes that feature beurre monte sauce…

• Sweet Butter Braised Maine Lobster with Baby Arrowleaf Spinach and a Saffron-Vanilla Sauce from Chef Thomas Keller via Food & Beverage International

• Filet Mignon With Yellow Corn Polenta and Cheese from Buhay Cocinero

• Potato Gnocci from Chef Tom Colicchio via The New York Times

• Cassolette of Sea Urchin and Lobster from Chef Ken Oringer of Clio

What do you get when you add 12 tons of meat, an army of 1,252 volunteer chefs, and a grill nearly a mile long? The world’s largest barbecue of course, with over 20,000 spectators lined up to eat it.When you add in the factor that the event was held in Uruguay, which boasts beef almost as revered in many gourmet circles as that in neighboring Argentina, you can be sure it was a true culinary happening.

“It’s all so beautiful. It’s a record” said Guinness World Records judge form the United States, Danny Girton who was present to register the event.

According to Reuters, Army personnel were used to set up the massive grill and firefighters lit six tons of charcoal to kick off the gargantuan cookout.

The official event was launched after the record breaking grill was inaugurated with a much smaller meal of kosher beef steak.

Here’s a video from the record breaking event to whet your appetite…

According to the CattleNetwork.Com, contrary to tradition and for practical reasons six tons of charcoal was used to barbecue the beef. Traditional Uruguayan barbecue is prepared on embers of hard wood, a slow process that can take up to an hour but which also enables the meat to be smoked. Like Argentinians, Uruguayans take their tradition of asado very seriously, and enjoy some of the highest per capita beef consumption in the world.

Viewed From Above, The World’s Largest Barbecue

The previous record holder of the World’s Largest Barbecue was Mexico, which won in 2006 with a comparatively paltry 8 tons of meat.

• Dutch Pancakes (Pannenkoeken) from eGullet

• Red Flannel Hash from The Common Room

• Elk Burgers W/Honey-Chipotle Mayo from Hot Sauce Blog

• Mac and Cheese with Buffalo Chicken from Epicurious

• Rellenos De Papa (Stuffed Mashed Potatoes) from Recipezaar

• Sauerbraten from Spice House

• Beef and Guinness Stew from About.Com: Home Cooking

• Apple Pork Pie from Taste of Home

• Braised Lamb Shanks with Sour Cream and Capers from About.Com: Home Cooking

• Southern Brownie Pie from Suite 1010: Southern Cuisine

• Lumberjack Cake from Recipezaar

Enjoy the Holiday!

Tomorrow, I’ll be sharing an original summertime recipe for Cucumber, Apple, & Spinach Salad With Curried Pecans and Lemony Coriander Dressing.

Ever wonder where top chefs like Anthony Bourdain, Thomas Keller, and Tom Colicchio like to go on vacation, area restaurants they can’t resist, what their guilty culinary pleasures are on the road, and more?

Then you’ll enjoy this series of interesting pieces from Fodors which features 14 top chefs including Alice Waters, Anthony Bourdain, Thomas Keller, Tom, Colicchio, Ming Tsai, Suvir Saran, Lidia Bastianich, Govind Armstrong, Michelle Bernstein, Gavin Kaysen, Bobby Flay, and Suzanne Goin, sharing their favorite foodie meccas (excerpts below):

Anthony Bourdain on New York:

“What do we do in New York better than anyone else in the world?’ The answer to that question is deli…It’s the food that I miss when I’m away, no matter how well I’m eating. Even in places with fantastic food — Singapore, Hong Kong — the food that I miss first is deli.”

(You can read more from Anthony Bourdain on the subject here.)

Thomas Keller on the Napa Valley:

“When I think of lunch in Napa, I think of something quick that’s kind of comforting. And one of the places I like is Taylor’s Refresher. They have great hamburgers and fish tacos and you can sit outside in the beautiful weather because they have a big lawn right behind it. One of the things about Napa Valley, which is so unique, is that all of our restaurants are really good…People come to Napa Valley primarily to eat and drink, so we have great wine and great restaurants.”

(You can read more from Thomas Keller on the subject here.)

Tom Colicchio on Charleston, SC:

“What’s great about the South is that the idea of hospitality is second-nature. One of my favorites in Charleston is Hominy Grill. It is just the epitome of Southern casual dining. Breakfast, lunch, dinner — every single meal is just wonderful. Usually when I go to Charleston, I go right from the plane to Hominy Grill. I try to get there for breakfast — they do shrimp and grits and different egg dishes. Whatever they serve is usually seasonal, wonderful, delicious. Last time I was there I had shad roe and scrambled eggs for breakfast…

For me, going to South Carolina, it’s not so much about the beaches, it’s about the marshes. It’s just wonderful to get a kayak and go through the marshes. You see everything from redfish to alligators to dolphins. It’s amazing — the amount of birds and wildlife…

There are so many little fish shacks around Charleston. There’s a little place called Bowen’s Island, an oyster grill where you sit at a picnic table, and the guy comes by with a shovel full of oysters that come off the grill and just puts [them] on the table on top of newspaper and they’re kind of steamed open from the grill — and that’s it. You dip them in butter and that’s all they serve…”

(You can read more from Tom Colicchio on the subject here.)

Also, you can see photos of Bowen’s Island on our FlickR Photoset here as well as read the full series of top chef interviews here.

• Double Chocolate Pancakes from Global Gourmet

• Chocolate Covered Strawberries from Chirky.Com

• Nutella Cookies from Alpineberry

• Chocolate-Mascarpone Phyllo Triangles from Allrecipes.Com

• Enchilada Casserole with Quick Mole Sauce from MyRecipes.Com

• Cheesecake With Chocolate Lace from BakeSpace

• White Chocolate Cake With Orange Marmalade Filling from Food & Wine

Enjoy the Holiday!

• Garlicky Prawn, Roasted Pepper, and Goat Cheese Quesadillas from The Gutsy Gourmet

• Blue Cornmeal Chorizo Stuffing from About.Com: Homecooking

• Pescado Borrachos (Drunken Fish) from The Epicentre

• El Charro Barbacoa from Clay’s Kitchen

• Black Beans With Mexican Beer from Chow.Com

• Sopes from ifood.tv

• Churros from Kaboose.com

• Tres Leches Cake from Cooking Mexican Recipes

Enjoy the Holiday!

Just how addicted to coffee are you? Do you ever wish you could be permanently hooked up to a coffee I.V.? (If so, see the cartoon to the right.)

What about using coffee as a homemade beauty treatment to firm and tone the skin? (Supposedly you can.) Do you have Starbucks Finder installed on your handheld PDA so you can get your fix anywhere you go?

Then cooking with coffee is the next step in your addiction cycle.

Beyond tiramisu and other obvious coffee flavored desserts, coffee and/or espresso can be used to make a wide variety of interesting marinades, rubs, and sauces. If you’ve ever known the deep pleasure of eating country ham and red-eye gravy, you’re already well on your way to enjoying coffee as a culinary enhancement.

Here’s a few main meal recipes featuring coffee as an ingredient:

• Steak in Indonesian-Java Marinade from Kate’s Global Kitchen

• Charred Buffalo Medallions with Coffee BBQ Sauce from The Food Network

• Grilled Pork Chops with Coffee Barbecue Sauce from About.Com Home Cooking

• Chicken And Coffee Barbecue Sauce from Cooking With Gourmet Coffee

• Coffee Glazed Roast Leg of Lamb from CooksRecipes.Com

• Beef Short Ribs & Coffee, Ancho and Cinnamon Sauce from VisualRecipes.Com

By the way, it is said that French writer Honore de Balzac drank up to 40 strong cups of coffee a day. He went on to write 92 novels and his essay, The Pleasures and Pain of Coffee, gives one a fascinating/horrifying glimpse of his all-too-caffeinated life.

As Balzac goes on to write in the essay…

“For a while - for a week or two at most - you can obtain the right amount of (creative) stimulation with one, then two cups of coffee brewed from beans that have been crushed with gradually increasing force and infused with hot water.

For another week, by decreasing the amount of water used, by pulverizing the coffee even more finely, and by infusing the grounds with cold water, you can continue to obtain the same cerebral power.

When you have produced the finest grind with the least water possible, you double the dose by drinking two cups at a time; particularly vigorous constitutions can tolerate three cups. In this manner one can continue working for several more days.

Finally, I have discovered a horrible, rather brutal method that I recommend only to men of excessive vigor, men with thick black hair and skin covered with liver spots, men with big square hands and legs shaped like bowling pins. It is a question of using finely pulverized, dense coffee, cold and anhydrous, consumed on an empty stomach. This coffee falls into your stomach, a sack whose velvety interior is lined with tapestries of suckers and papillae. The coffee finds nothing else in the sack, and so it attacks these delicate and voluptuous linings; it acts like a food and demands digestive juices; it wrings and twists the stomach for these juices, appealing as a pythoness appeals to her god; it brutalizes these beautiful stomach linings as a wagon master abuses ponies; the plexus becomes inflamed; sparks shoot all the way up to the brain. From that moment on, everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination’s orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink - for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.

I recommended this way of drinking coffee to a friend of mine, who absolutely wanted to finish a job promised for the next day: he thought he’d been poisoned and took to his bed, which he guarded like a married man. He was tall, blond, slender and had thinning hair; he apparently had a stomach of papier-mache. There has been, on my part, a failure of observation.”

Balzac died at the age of 51. Ironically enough, Ebook Takeaway offers 51 of his books that you can download free of charge here. There’s also some great coffee trivia here as well as Food & Wine’s Obsessive Guide to Coffee.

• Fadge (from Basic-Recipes.Com)

• Corned Beef and Cabbage Soup (from About.Com Southern Food)

• Irish Apple Mash (from RecipeCenter.Com)

• Colcannon (from Europeancuisines.com)

• Beef and Guinness Pie (from T.S. McHughs.Com)

• Irish Cod Cobbler (from Recipezaar)

• Bailey’s Irish Cream Cheesecake (from Baking About.Com)

• Blarney Stone Cookies (from Land O’ Lakes)

• Apple Barley Pudding (from Ireland-Information.Com)

Also, check out Cocktail.com’s St. Patrick’s Day Cocktail Page as well as this nice roundup of traditional Irish recipes here.

Enjoy the Holiday!