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dhyasama

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Everything posted by dhyasama

  1. White Heat Marco is bad ass and so is this book. Very rock and roll.
  2. I ate at Sage a few months ago and loved it. The foie gras custard brulee is over the top good. Highly recommended.
  3. Thanks for responding to my concerns, Nathan. I first heard about your book at a David Chang book signing (he's very excited about it). A few weeks later I stumbled upon an article about IV and became concerned. I feel much better now and appreciate your candor.
  4. The book project is coming along very well. Yes, it is going to be expensive. Current plan is ~1500 pages, bound into 3 volumes in a boxed set. We looked at a physical prototype of the book yesterday (with blank pages)- it weighs about 30 lbs. One thing I found interesting is that they say that there will be between 1 and 2 lbs of ink! We have not set pricing yet, but it will likely be in the $300 range. Heston's Big Fat Duck coobook came out at $250, and the el bulli books are $350. We have about 3X the number of pages as el bulli books, and almost that multiple for Heston's book. So if we had the same price per page it would $1000+. The Joan Roca sous vide book is $200 for a much smaller number of pages - indeed our sous vide chapter is longer than his book. We hope to eventually produce a cost reduced version. Heston has done that with a much cheaper $75 verison of his book, but it did not come out until long after the main version. I know there will be people who will be upset about the price. I'm interested in getting feedback on this. I think that a lot of the issue is that cookbooks are typically priced very cheaply. It is a bit odd that to eat Thomas Keller's food you pay $250 per person at Per Se or French Laundry - the book is about the same as the tip on one meal. We have taken a no-compromise approach to making the book with both thousands of person-hours of effort by a large team. We also have no-compromise in terms of photographs - we have color photos on every page. That is really expensive to produce, and expensive to print. Cookbooks published in the US cut corners everywhere - there are very few photos and the like. Most European cookbooks do too, but to a lesser extent, and books like Big Fat Duck cookbook, or el bulli cookbooks have much higher production values. However these books tend not to have as much in the way of step-by-step directions. Since Intellectual Ventures is an invention company, do you plan on protecting your research by filing for patents?
  5. dhyasama

    Smoked Apple Sauce

    Do whatever you can to get more apple flavor in there, e.g., use apple wood for the smoking, maybe baste with applejack or apple brandy, etc. It might be good to make a smoked apple chutney. Smokiness tends to go well with a little heat.
  6. I try, but I can't make a 750g pepperoni/pepper/mushroom/mozza/tomato pizza for less than McCain's $5 frozen version. The meat and cheese are big ticket items. In fact, I'd make more fresh cheese if milk wasn't so pricey. But can you make it better?
  7. I prefer to think of chefs as directors rather than as movies. So the same chef being up for the award every year is like Steven Spielberg or James Cameron winning multiple Oscar's over the years, not like Avatar winning best picture every year.
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