I’ve got a pretty good biscuit recipe… people regularly tell me it’s one of the best biscuits they’ve ever had. It’s a classic recipe with a few twists like shredding the fat on a box grater for optimum flakiness. In the interest of continuous improvement, I thought I’d see if I could apply some newly acquired kitchen technology and knowledge to improve upon my trusty biscuit recipe… here’s what I came up with.
My grandpa is 93 years old. He drinks a glass of brandy every night. Since purchasing my rotoary evaporator, I’ve wanted to make him some brandy… here’s what happened.
A roatary evaporator (rotovap) is basically a still… as in distillation, as in moonshine. Of course, like many modern cooking apparatus, it got it’s start in laboratories. Mostly scientists use it to boil off solvents thus purifying what remains.
For much more detail on how the system works, read this. But here’s the quick nitty gritty.
30 days before my trip to Chicago I got extremely excited. I had scored a reservation for two at San Pellegrino’s best restaurant in North America (#7 in the world) Alinea. A meal at Alinea is one of the few things that were truly on my bucket list. I had followed just about everything that Chef Grant Achatz had done in the past few years. From his lectures at Harvard to you tube videos to reading his (auto)biography Life on the Line. I was more than excited to experience this ground breaking restaurant for myself.
What do you say about eating at Alinea that hasn’t already been said?
Suffice to say, I had high expectations for the food, service, and experience. In fact, I had concerns that. O matter how good everything was, that it might not live up to the hype I had built up in my own head.
SPOILER: I was blown away.
Wanna know what a chef does every week? (No you don’t!) There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into creating high quality meals for you to enjoy. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of serving two couples my first tasting menu. It was a meal that I was incredibly proud of. Here’s what went into its creation.
Months before the dinner I started brainstorming courses for the meal. I probably tossed around thirty to fourty ideas. I settled on 19. Those 19 courses had to be organized into an order that made sense and was executable…. that was quite a task.
Bulgogi Short rib cooked 72hrs 57.2C, Banchan.
Last weekend I had a ridiculous food experience in Chicago. You already know I spent a couple of days in one of the best kitchens in the country, but here’s what I did when I wasn’t working…
