By KATHLEEN SQUIRES

The 6th Annual International Gourmet Festival, a 10-day cooking event featuring 33 Michelin-starred chefs from a dozen countries, wrapped up late last month in Albufeira, Portugal. Here are some of the most celestial offerings we encountered.

Hernan Rodriguez

Chef Shaun Hergatt

Best Looking

Toro

Pink pieces of tuna belly lined the plate like petits fours, adorned with bright blue borage flowers and beaming yellow cucumber blossoms. Notes of ginger, lime, rice-wine vinegar and a crisp, compressed cucumber accompanied the fish, with a dollop of golden osetra as a rich, salty, grand finale.

The chef: Shaun Hergatt, SHO Shaun Hergatt, New York. “The flowers added a synergy between the fish and vegetables—borage, for example, tastes like oyster and cucumber.”

Best Reinvented Classic

Bouillabaisse en Sashimi

Uncooked fish and cold broth marked this bright reinterpretation of a classic, generously garnished with the bounty of the Algarve (oysters, clams, mussels, snapper, lobster, prawns, shrimp, sea urchin and caviar).

The chef: Laurent Gras, formerly of L2O, Chicago. “I replaced the traditional rouille with a wasabi emulsion. The bouillabaisse is clarified and turned into a consommé, with kombu adding a natural gelatin and shaved bonito bringing smokiness.”

Vasco Célio/Stills

A dish by chef Normand Laprise

Most Festive

Beef With Christmas Tree Scent and Barberry

Sweet berries brightened a supple beef loin, perfumed with pine. Crosnes, tiny winter tubers, added a nutty edge and snappy texture.

The chef: Normand Laprise, Toqué, Montreal. “We have a lot of forest in Quebec, and I like to use its essence in my meals. When I was a child we used pine as a medicine. Barberry is also traditionally a medicine berry, so this dish is meant to be very soothing.”

Most Ingenious

Compression of My Gastronomic Life

Layers of emulsions and foam had all the tricks of modern cuisine and all the taste of traditional Italy. Salty cheese, lush beans and rosemary essence translated to a wild take on pasta fagioli.

The chef: Massimo Bottura, Osteria Francescana, Modena, Italy. “The bottom layer is crème royale, a tribute to Joel Robuchon. The top is rosemary foam, which reminds me of Ferran Adrià. The middle is a crusty Parmigiano-Reggiano, sliced thin like pasta and cooked in a bean sauce, like my grandmother would make. She is the emotional part of the dish.”

Best Faux Caviar

Monkfish Drizzled With Geranium Oil

A painter’s palette of rosy roasted shallots; mossy green spinach in soy butter; and a sunburst of carrot-mustard purée surrounded the florally-scented fish. A bed of tart, caviar-like finger lime seeds gave a surprising pop.

The chef: Alain Passard, L’Arpège, Paris. “The geraniums and lime seed are from my garden. This dish says so much about my cooking because it is light and based on wellness. There is no cream, no sauce. Very surprising for a French chef, no?”

By MELISSA KORN

(Please see Corrections & Amplifications item below.)

As the economy eases into recovery mode, more companies are temporarily filling holes in their work forces before making permanent hiring decisions these days. But with the right moves, a temporary employee can make that job permanent.

Jody Miller, chief executive of Business Talent Group, a Los Angeles interim-executive placement firm, says she saw a 50% increase in requests for temporary talent in 2009 over 2008, with a significant bump in the second half of 2009. At least 19 publicly traded companies have appointed interim CEOs or CFOs since Jan. 1, more than half from within, according to recent news reports.

Interim executives are sometimes brought in from outside a company to help it through a restructuring or a scandal. But companies are also filling empty posts with internal candidates—many of whom were hoping for an actual promotion to the position—while weighing candidates. That leaves ample room for a well-positioned interim manager to impress, and potentially become a permanent fixture.

Proving Yourself

But successfully removing interim from your title isn’t always easy. “If you were the primary candidate, they would have just named you to that position,” says Joni Lindquist, president of KHC Executive Coaching in Overland Park, Kan. Assertive action, she says, can help move you to the top of the list.

Mike Belleme for The Wall Street Journal

Diana Galvin became a full-time numbers cruncher at Conrad & Co. after an interim gig.

You need to prove that the company shouldn’t risk replacing you, career experts say. Companies are interested in finding a candidate to fill the spot and will usually be open to someone with new ideas who can help implement them while they’re in the job, says John Beeson, a principal at Beeson Consulting Inc. in New York.

That was the case for Mark Moran, now chief executive officer and president of the MetroHealth System in Cleveland. When the contract of the company’s CEO wasn’t renewed in early 2008, Mr. Moran took over as interim head of the 500-physician medical center. He had helped the hospital create a strategic plan in 2007, when he worked as a consultant. As interim CEO, Mr. Moran overhauled the reimbursement system and helped launch a new center for uninsured patients, all with the board’s support.

William S. Gaskill, chairman of MetroHealth, says he was impressed with Mr. Moran’s focus on improving the revenue stream, something that would be positive for the hospital beyond any interim stint. The hospital, which had reported deep losses in the first quarter of 2008, ended the year in the black. Mr. Moran moved from interim to permanent CEO in March 2009.

That idea extends to nonmanagerial positions, too. Diana Galvin moved into a full-time staff accountant position in October at Conrad & Co. in Spartanburg, S.C., by learning not just how she could do her assignments well, but also how the company wanted to improve. She joined the firm on a part-time, interim basis in August and made sure to tell a senior accountant she could do more than key in data—she could crunch the numbers. “As we talked, they learned I had more skills than what they contracted for,” says Ms. Galvin, who showed she could help the company grow by supporting a high volume of clients.

The Talk

Career experts also say you should quickly express your interest in staying past the initial contract term. Have a formal conversation with supervisors within a few weeks of starting the temporary job, says Ms. Miller, whose firm places professionals at the vice president level and above. That is long enough to learn the ropes, but not so long that the search for a permanent replacement starts without you, she says.

Ms. Miller says more than a quarter of executives she places move into permanent jobs.

Even if you have got a good shot at the permanent position, Ms. Lindquist of KHC recommends asking your supervisor for specific steps to take to become the top candidate. Do your time-management skills need improvement, for example.

No matter how well you understand your job function, you can boost your odds of landing the job if you adopt the new group’s practices quickly—down to learning appropriate jargon—to show the hiring committee you’ve easily settled in, says Brett Good, a district president at Robert Half International Inc., a temporary staffing firm in Menlo Park, Calif.

Inside Job

That can be easier if you have landed an interim role internally. Employees promoted from within can provide managers with concrete examples of attempts to grow into the role, such as offering up the results of discussions with other division heads about managing budgets or meetings with subordinates regarding your leadership style.

Margaret Dahlberg says her 13 years of institutional knowledge at Valley City State University in Valley City, N.D., helped her get promoted from interim to permanent vice president of academic affairs this winter.

Dr. Dahlberg took the interim post in April as the school recovered from massive flooding that forced students to finish the semester remotely. The former English professor and department chair wasn’t initially in the running for the permanent job, and even helped interview external candidates. As interim, Dr. Dahlberg helped the school prepare its new academic catalogue and gear up for re-accreditation.

But Dr. Dahlberg impressed university President Steven Shirley enough that she was asked to stay on for the fall semester, and then for good. “There was nothing that any of these folks were bringing that she wasn’t already doing,” Dr. Shirley says.

Corrections & Amplifications:

The MetroHealth System is based in Cleveland. A previous version of this Careers article about turning temporary jobs into permanent ones incorrectly said the hospital system was based in Cincinnati.

Write to Melissa Korn at melissa.korn@dowjones.com

By KELLY CROW

Global art collectors converged on London during the past two weeks for major auctions of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art. These sales are usually dominated by Europeans, but this time, the biggest players came from the U.S.

Confident American bidders lifted the sales to a combined $713 million, with Christie’s $457 million total topping Sotheby’s roughly $256 million. Overall, the results easily topped the houses’ low estimates of $413 million.

London’s top auction houses will conclude their major series of winter art sales Friday, but there already appears to be a clear winner: America. Kelly Crow has details on Lunch Break. Photo: Sotheby’s

New York real-estate developer Sheldon Solow was among the biggest sellers, getting $33.4 million at Christie’s Tuesday for his Francis Bacon painting “Portrait of Henrietta Moraes” as well as $26.6 million at the same house on Feb. 7 for his Joan Miró “Painting-Poem.”

During the contemporary-art sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s earlier this week, American collectors bid on a majority of the priciest pieces on offer, largely over the telephone. Among their winnings: a $15.5 million “Abstract Painting” by Gerhard Richter, an $8.3 million Nicolas de Staël landscape, “Agrigente,” and several squiggly lined abstracts by Cy Twombly. An American also took home Shanghai-based Zhang Huan’s $228,304 “Ash Head No. 1″ sculpture at Sotheby’s on Wednesday.

American collectors feel like they’re “farther down the road to economic recovery” than their Continental counterparts, said Christie’s specialist Amy Cappellazzo. U.S. buyers also capitalized on the dollar’s growing strength over most of the past year against the British pound to exert more purchasing power throughout these sales, she added.

Christie’s Images Ltd.

Francis Bacon’s ‘Portrait of Henrietta Moraes,’ offered by a New York developer, sold for $33.4 million.

New Jersey art adviser Eddie Mishon said his American clients feel “safe” buying art this season. On Wednesday, he bid on several works at Sotheby’s before winning a $624,398 untitled oil-on-paper by Willem de Kooning: “I was working it,” Mr. Mishon joked of his willingness to compete.

Throughout these sales, collectors gravitated to artists with global fan bases and easy-to-recognize styles like Richter, the German painter best known for creating wildly colorful abstracts by scraping an oversize squeegee across his canvases. Ten Richters came up for sale during the houses’ evening sales this week, and nine sold for a combined $45.2 million. (Four of Sotheby’s top five priciest contemporary works were by Richter.) Dealers said the artist is enjoying a profile boost this season, thanks to a retrospective on view in London and Berlin.

Collectors and dealers also flocked to Lucio Fontana, the Italian artist who gained international fame in the 1950s by slashing his monochrome canvases with a knife. Right now, his red versions seem to outsell those slashed in paler colors. Christie’s got $3.2 million for Fontana’s red “Spatial Concept, Expectations” from 1967. Andy Warhol collector Jose Mugrabi also paid $943,963 for a gray 1962 version by Fontana with the same title.

Elsewhere during the contemporary sales, Asian bidders appeared to be branching out. Not only did they pay $2.8 million and $1.6 million for a pair of paintings by Chinese abstract painter Zao Wou-ki, but an Asian telephone bidder also won Berlinde de Bruyckere’s $510,643 sculpture of a life-size, stuffed horse crouching on a table, “K 36 (The Black Horse),” a new price record for the artist at auction. Asians also won a $577,250 Damien Hirst Spot painting and a $416,443 photo of Madrid’s Prado Museum by Thomas Struth.

Europeans, for their part, fought hard for a new favorite: Christopher Wool, the Chicago-born post-Conceptual artist whose paintings of stenciled words have long been more coveted in the U.S. At Christie’s Tuesday, an untitled painting, with black letters spelling out the word “fool,” sold to a European for $7.7 million, a new auction record for the artist.

Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com

By LORRAINE LUK And JESSICA E. VASCELLARO

As Apple prepares to launch a new iPad next month, word is out that the company is weighing plans to produce a smaller version of the tablet. The WSJ’s Deborah Kan speaks to Yun-Hee Kim.

Apple Inc. is working with component suppliers in Asia to test a new tablet computer with a smaller screen, people familiar with the situation said, as it looks to broaden its product pipeline amid intensifying competition and maintain its dominant market share.

Officials at some of Apple’s suppliers, who declined to be named, said the Cupertino, Calif., company has shown them screen designs for a new device with a screen size of around eight inches and said the company is qualifying suppliers for it. Apple’s latest tablet, the iPad 2, comes with a 9.7-inch screen. It was launched last year.

One person said the smaller device will have a similar-resolution screen as the iPad 2. Apple is working with screen makers including Taiwan-based AU Optronics Co. and LG Display Co. of South Korea to supply the test panels, the person said.

Apple, which works with suppliers to test new designs all the time, could opt not to proceed with the device.

An Apple spokeswoman in California declined to comment.

The move comes as Apple is preparing to announce a new iPad in early March, according to people familiar with the matter. That device is expected to have a higher-resolution screen than the iPad 2 with a similar screen size, according to people familiar with the matter. A version will run on fourth-generation wireless networks from Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc.

A smaller tablet device would broaden Apple’s portfolio and could help it compete with rivals such as Samsung Electronics Co. and Amazon.com Inc. It would also begin to emulate the strategy it took for its iPod music player, which it released in a number of shapes and sizes over time. The company has taken a different tack with its iPhone, releasing one design at a time.

Analysts said a tablet with a smaller screen would help Apple expand its market share in the increasingly competitive market.

Diana Wu, an analyst at Capital Securities in Taipei, says that consumer demand for Samsung’s 5.3-inch Galaxy Note and Amazon’s 7-inch Kindle mean “consumers want a tablet that is smaller than the existing 9.7-inch iPad.” “IPad’s features are good enough, but pricing would be an important factor in the mass market, especially in big emerging markets like China and India,” she said.

The iPad represented more than 61.5% of world-wide tablet shipments in the third quarter, down from 63.3% in the second quarter, according to market researcher IDC.

Samsung, which supplies Apple with key components such as memory chips and processors used in iPads, sells its Galaxy Tab iPad competitor in three screen sizes: a seven-inch, an 8.9-inch and a 10.1-inch.

Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire has a seven-inch screen size and is priced at $199, well below the iPad’s entry-level price of $499.

Apple has long contemplated different tablet designs, according to people familiar with the matter. But it had indicated it was wedded to the iPad’s current size.

In October 2010, Steve Jobs, Apple’s late co-founder and chief executive, criticized smaller tablets, saying the iPad’s 9.7-inch form was “the minimum size required to create great tablet apps.”

Apple, like many other big personal-computer and consumer-electronics brands, doesn’t actually make most of its products. It hires manufacturing specialists—many of which are from Taiwan and have extensive operations in China—to assemble its gadgets based on Apple’s designs.

They use parts from other outside suppliers, many of which also are from Asia. The arrangement frees Apple and its fellow vendors from running complicated, labor-intensive production lines, while the ability of Taiwanese companies to slash manufacturing costs helps cut product prices over time.

Apple, facing growing scrutiny about working conditions in its supply chain, Tuesday continued to combat the criticism.

Apple CEO Tim Cook , appearing at a Goldman Sachs technology conference in San Francisco, said the company takes working conditions very seriously. “The supply chain is complex. We believe every worker has the right to a safe working environment. Apple’s suppliers must live up to this to do business with Apple,” he said.

Mr. Cook said Apple is constantly auditing facilities. At the beginning of the year, he said, Apple collected weekly data on over a half a million workers in its supply chain. Apple will now be reporting its audits on a monthly basis on its website, which Cook said is unprecedented in the industry.

In the quarter ended in December, Apple hit new sales and profit records based on runaway holiday demand for the iPhone and iPad.

The company’s share price has climbed in the wake of those results, closing above $500 a share for the first time Monday.

—Jung-Ah Lee in Seoul contributed to this article.

Write to Lorraine Luk at lorraine.luk@dowjones.com and Jessica E. Vascellaro at jessica.vascellaro@wsj.com