Pairings, Celeb Chefs, and More Upcoming Events

Jane, stop this crazy thing!

​Earlier in the week, Riki Altman cooked up beef tenderloin medalions from the new Morton's The Cookbook: 100 Steahkhouse Recipes for Every Kitchen. You sampled the recipe, now you can head to Morton's in Coral Gables on September 23 for a signing by author Tyler Fields III, the VP of Wine and Spirits for the celebrated chain. Comers will get the chance to taste some of the other great recipes from the book as well as bid on auction items to benefit charity. Tickets cost $39 pp.

Tickets went on sale this week for the Arsht Center's Celebrity Chef Series debuting on October 16. The first of three events will feature Food Network's Ingrid Hoffman and Daisy Martinez, but we're most excited about the second cook-off showcase with Eric Ripert, Anthony Bourdain, and Jacques Pepin. If that ain't enough Frenchified celeb chef love to get you going, nothing will.

New Times' Pairings is, of course, this Thursday, September 17 at 7:30 p.m.You still have a chance to purchase $35 tickets to the event, featuring food from local joints like Bova Prime, Lola's on Harrison, YOLO, Seasons 52, Sublime, and many more. Tomorrow, tickets will bump to $45 a pop.

Finally, here are two cool web sites to play with if you're staring at your fridge tonight: CookThing is essentially a search engine that will provide any number of recipes based on what type of dish you're looking to make and what ingredients you have handy. So, for instance, if you know you want to make candied yams with bourbon, just type yams into the search field and click on bourbon (appearing in 2.3% of all recipes). Sweet: now you're halfway to drunken yams.

Likewise, if you don't feel like cooking but can't make up your mind on where to eat tonight, test your luck out on the Wheel of Lunch. All you have to do is enter your zip code and "spin" the wheel; what comes back is a list of local eateries rotating around like a gameshow. Wherever it lands, that's where you go. Sounds fun in a really random sort of way.