edsel
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Don't think this has been mentioned elsewhere, but registered owners of the 1st edition can order the 4 prints for the price of shipping and handling! Just got mine, they're beautiful (naturally) and I can't wait to get them framed and up!
How do you access the free prints? I'm a registered 1st edition owner but all I see is the full-price links on the online store page.
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In an interview in Timeout Chicago, Achatz talks about upcoming menus at Next:
Grant Achatz talks what's next for Next
Starting in mid-October they'll be doing a menu evoking memories of childhood. They're a bit fuzzy about what that might entail.
The thing with the time, when we do Childhood it’s not Grant Achatz 1982, it’s just childhood. It should resonate even with my parents, there should be something universal they can pull from just as well.Summer of 2012 will be Sicily. They'll also be doing the French Laundry, October 28, 1996, the day that Achatz started work there. Most exciting to me is a confirmation that the el bulli retrospective is actually going to happen. He had floated that idea in previous interviews, but it looks like it will really happen.
I talked to him [Ferran Adrià] about the idea of doing El Bulli and he was excited. Our idea is to do a course a year for the duration of the restaurant, to show the evolution. He took over in 1987, so there are more than 20 years of creativity and expression there. If we can hone in on one course per year to best exemplify the way that restaurant changed things during that particular year, well, that’s going to be big, and I think it’s very important that he comes in on it so we’re going to make that happen. -
Well, I've managed to track down some fabulous Brioche and ciabatta. I'm going to hit another bakery and see if I can't get some additional varieties, too.
I don't think the source of the bread has been mentioned. Tom, did you get the brioche from Golden Goose (aka Blue Door)? I was fortunate to take home an extra loaf. It made some amazing French toast.
The tasty nut-dried fruit breads I picked up at the Shaker market came from Lucy's Sweet Surrender. We've got some great bakeries in the area, and I'd like to make sure they get credit where credit is due!
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I can't process the photos from my new camera because the software I use hasn't been updated to handle the new model yet. I'm able to upload videos from it though. Here's a glimpse of the kitchen and Pass at Greenhouse Tavern Friday night. I should have asked them how many dishes they sent out that night. The place was hopping!
Pig Face up!
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Just catching up with this thread. I'd be DELIGHTED to have this in Philly next year and I'm sure my PhilleGulleteers would be happy to help too. I'm not sure how a city east of Pittsburgh qualifies as "Heartland", but that's just semantics at this point. Would love to show off our fabulous city, and all the great eats and drinks available here. Commercial kitchen space might be negotiated at any one of a number of locations. Tours of Reading Terminal and Italian Market. Farmer's Markets abound in summertime. What are folks interested in?
Yes! I say that "Heartland" is a state of mind.
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Fantastic Gathering this year. It was great seeing everyone.
So who's up for hosting next year's events? I nominate Philadelphia! (Actually, I think it was mentioned by several people at brunch this morning.)
It would be great to go to a city that hasn't hosted the Gathering in the past.
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Where's the best place for Kaffir Lime leaves and lemongrass?
There are several Asian markets in the area. They almost always have lemongrass. Kaffir Lime leaves are usually available frozen, and sometimes fresh. I have a small Kaffir tree and a few stalks of lemongrass in the garden, so if you don't need a lot I can just harvest some for the dinner. It's a small tree so I don't want to defoliate it.
A few kaffir lime leaves would be great - wish I had a tree - given how hot it is here right now it would probably be one of the only things thriving. Lemon grass is usually easy to find frozen (and so nice and easy to use that way) in an asian market.
With an asian market available then we will be good for a little bottle of fish sauce and palm sugar so I won't bother to bring them along.
After my last little incident at the border I'm not going to bring any plant material with me. I'm leaving the citric acid in it's container - just hope a scale and a white bottle of chemical type powder doesn't draw undo attention!
About how many lime leaves would you need? As I said, the tree is pretty small, so I can't bring a huge amount. My lemongrass is still on the small side, but I can bring that as well. I have some other herbs and some peppers (but not Thai peppers - didn't grow those this year).
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After that, a break until Happy Hour, though anyone who comes to Crop and just wants to just stay in Ohio City (where VTR is also) could wander the West Side Market or have a beer at Great Lakes Brewing Company.
I would add Market Garden Brewery as another option. Andy Tveekrem, the former brewmaster at Dogfish Head, has moved back to Cleveland. MGB is next door to the West Side Market.
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VTR's dress code is pretty straight forward: no ripped jeans. Nice jeans are okay, but if you want to fit in with the regular crowd, I would go khaki/dockers for men and a nice polo shirt. Basically business casual. Every other place we are going to is completely casual, especially the dinner we are cooking for ourselves on Saturday.
I would say that the Thursday Crawl destinations are business casual rather than completely casual. Especially Dante. (Though I suspect we'll be in the back room, so maybe it doesn't matter so much).
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Where's the best place for Kaffir Lime leaves and lemongrass?
There are several Asian markets in the area. They almost always have lemongrass. Kaffir Lime leaves are usually available frozen, and sometimes fresh. I have a small Kaffir tree and a few stalks of lemongrass in the garden, so if you don't need a lot I can just harvest some for the dinner. It's a small tree so I don't want to defoliate it.
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Anyone else want to commit?
I'm happy to help out with any course.
Rick Stick NoodlesWould those be Rice Stick Noodles?
I was thinking of doing the Mac and Cheese recipe from Modernist Cuisine as a side dish. We've got great local ingredients for it, including some fantastic local cheeses. But maybe two pasta dishes would be overkill (though David's dish is quite different from mac 'n' Cheese!)Janet, gimlets will be most appreciated!
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In addition to the menu, Achatz is live-tweeting pics from the first practice dinner.
Leela from the SheSimmers blog provided translations of the menu headings. Pretty much what I would have guessed, but it's nice to know.
Street Food, Tom Yam, Thai Jasmine Rice and Relishes, Catfish, Beef, Watermelon, Coconut, and Caramel -
Tickets for the Thai menu close to going live. Here's a Tweet from Chef Achatz:
http://yfrog.com/gygl0alj Tickets on sale soon.Wish I had a better sense of what "soon" means...
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You could do an Asian version of the ballotine, either roasting or deep-frying the bird. I've cooked this Asian stuffed roast chicken recipe, & it's tasty. Only the ingredients are listed on Googlebooks. The chicken is stuffed, then placed on a bed of onion, carrots, & celery, and roasted. The remaining ingredients are a glaze for basting the chicken as it roasts. I like to add a little brown sugar to the mix.
Here on Googlebooks, page 144:
For a ballotine, since you've got the chicken all deboned and flattened out like that, it's a nice touch to marinate the meat beforehand.
The stuffing looks good. It's fairly similar to the one in the Ken Hom cookbook I learned the technique from. Hom does essentially the same steps as shown in the Pepin video, except that he doesn't split the skin down the backbone. He just works his way from the neck cavity, gradually turning the bird inside-out.
It's easier to do with a larger bird. I've done it many times with turkey. (With a smaller bird it's hard to do without tearing the skin.) It's great fun to serve a turkey that looks fairly normal but is completely boneless.
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Friday night we ate at Next and had a couple of drinks at Aviary as part of a friends and family night (I'm still stunned we were invited).
The meal was comped and it was still just a dress rehearsal so I don't want to get into to much detail. I will say that these are both going to be very special places. The dinner at Next was definitely one of the best classic French meals I've ever had. The duck is sure to be a signature dish.
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Has anyone been to Next now that it's officially open? I was expecting to see some posts here from folks who've dined there.
I booked the Kitchen Table for the last Sunday in June (near the end of the run for Paris 1906). My friends and I are quite excited about our trip. Will definitely report back about our experience.
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I have a Matfer egg topper it works well, but takes some getting used to. I find that setting the egg on a soft surface such as a dish towel and then topping the smaller side, by bringing up the weight about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way works best.
http://www.matferbourgeatusa.com/products/index.php/domestic-egg-topper.html
I bought a similar gizmo from Amazon. The one I have is spring-loaded. It appears that the Matfer one uses a weight to impact the cutting head.
I've had mixed results with the one from Paderno World Cuisine, but it's usually because the membrane tears. I need to try using an Exacto knife to cut the membrane.
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I also had a thought in the middle of the night that I just tried - cold brewed coffee. I know you can make a good cup of coffee by letting the grounds and water sit overnight then straining and heating, or keeping cold for iced coffee. Why not try speeding up the process with the vacuum sealer?
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Genius.
Agreed! This is a great idea. I'll be trying it tomorrow.
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Got home and my neighbours had intercepted the courier for me and had my copy. The packaging seems nuclear bomb proof and the set was smaller than I imagined it was going to be. But now happily installed on the "These do not go into the kitchen book shelf"
Now for some reading, I may be sometime......
I have one of those too. But my cheap shelves are starting to sag under the weight. Time to invest in better shelving!
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Small town Ohio here. (Outside of Cleveland) I ordered mine on August 9 and received it March 4. At least one friend in Cleveland has received hers, and another is probably going to have to wait for the next batch to arrive.
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A great time was had by all of it - it was a great group, and a great meal. It is also the end of a era, which made us all a bit sad, but also happy that we had been there to partake in it.
Doubly sad for those of us who never made it there. I found eGullet about eight years ago doing a Google search for "el bulli". I always dreamed of going there, but now I'll have to dream of something else in its place...
This has been a bittersweet "trip" for me, enjoying the dinner vicariously. I'm looking forward to seeing more photos and comments from you and from Johnny, who promised to upload pics to his blog.
Thanks for sharing the experience!
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It's quite readable with a Scotch instead (though I've already spilled on it once...)
Yikes! I'm keeping my books a safe distance from all beverages and food.
I'm skipping around in the book, using the index PDF as a means of finding areas of interest. I'll sit down and read through most of it at length, but right now I'm just getting a feel for it.
I like the terse, compact format for the recipes. (shades of Le Guide Culinaire...) But when I try to cook from them I wind up puzzling over some of the instructions, and I hit snags in the execution. There's such a staggering amount of information in these books that it will take me , quite literally, years to begin to absorb it all.
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Walking around the market, the hams looked so good that Nathan declared: "Let's get 100 grams of a really good ham and eat it outside."
Max quickly took this idea down the slippery slope. He navigated us through the painstaking purchase of three types of ham and a bunch of other stuff: sopressata, idiazabal cheese, three types of almonds, strawberries, wild berries, Diet Coke. Let's eat it down by the water, he suggested.
One of these things is not like the others.
Really enjoying your posts. I can hardly wait to hear about the "big event".
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Using the reservation system has been quite the wild ride. The tables are being released in waves, so dates pop up in the reservation grid sporadically. Clicking on one usually takes you to a blank slate of times (table already snapped up by someone with a faster mouse.)
This was posted on their Facebook page today:
We are going to post a video at some point of what this looks like from our end. Basically, I have unlocked about 25 tables in the past 1.5 hours... and they are 'held pending transaction' within 1 second each. Literally as fast as I hit refresh that's how fast somebody grabs them.I managed to grab the Chef's Table in late June. So looking forward to it!
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MC is primarily aimed at food people (there are 50 pages about coffee and 2388 pages about food topics), but I thought that having a great coffee chapter could make a real difference in how coffee is served by food people.
The true coffee cogniscenti don't need MC to tell them about great coffee - they already know.
This is the essence of the Mark Prince comment, and his review, so he clearly gets what we were trying to do.
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Yes, it was clear that Mark Prince appreciates who the chapter was written for. Very insiteful review.
I also didn't want to cut my Synesso machine in half.
In Chicago, Chef Grant Achatz Is Selling Tickets to His New Restaurant
in The Heartland: Dining
Posted
The el bulli season is going to be tough to get tickets for. They're only doing one seating, so tickets will be scarce. A majority of them will go to season ticket buyers - I assume that's not an option for you. They're holding back one reservstion per evening to auction off for charity, so if cost is no object...