Le Master

I'm pissed. I live about a three-minute walk away from Next and I thought I was gonna be one of the first thousand to receive an email. I guess not.

So, Noma once again did not rise above two stars this year.

Damn. I have the Alinea book and it is big. Modernist Cuisine must be more gigantic than I thought.

It'd be cool to see pics of where everyone is situating these tomes in their new homes. It'll probably give me greater incentive to pinch pennies (err, about fifty thousand of them).

How much and what sort of discussion is there of garlic?

Amazon is pretty amazing, though, and you can return it for free as many times as you want until it's in the condition you want it. They'll even send UPS to your house to pick it up for you. I was a jerk and did it three times with my Alinea book.

Wow. Thanks for the writeup, yellow truffle. The pheasant in snow on evergreen branches is genius. I can't even imagine the aromatic delights that must have brought. And eating out of that forest looks like it was just fun as hell.

Why must you taunt us?

Thanks. I don't seem to be able to read it online after all, and in fact I'd rather own a copy. eGullet to the rescue again! Really? I just created an Open Library account (free) and was reading it in Adobe Digital Editions (also free) in under five minutes. It's nice because the eBook is scans of the book, so it looks very good. And it's also been OCRed so that you can search it. By the way, thanks for the link, BadRabbit.

I've come across a lot over time. Most are in French, however, such as the ones by Escoffier. But there are a few good English books: The Royal Parisian Pastrycook and Confectioner by Antoine Carême Le livre de cuisine (The Royal Cookery Book) by Gouffé Le livre de pâtisserie (The Royal Book of Pastry and Confectionery) by Gouffé Le livre des conserves (The Book of Preserves) by Gouffé Apicius redivivus (The Cook's Oracle: Containing receipts for plain cookery, on the most economical plan for private families; containing also a complete system of cookery for Catholic families) by William Kitchiner (Note that there are two links, one to an early edition and one to the third addition) All can be downloaded as PDFs and other formats gratis.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average 2009 expenditure on food per consumer unit was $6,372, or $17.45/day.

From the NYT today: Sunday Book Review: Cookbooks

Best of 2010 Cookbook Listicles

René Redzepi's Noma and Heston Blumenthal's Heston's Fantastical Feasts.

What ingredients are in that sauce? Is there a taste to which it is akin?

Grant Achatz started a thread over at the alinea-mosaic forums about this. Instead of summing it up, it's probably worth just clicking over and reading.

(YouTube link) for Harvard's Science and Cooking class was just uploaded the other day. It's called Reinventing Food Texture and Flavor (iTunes link). It's a wonderful insight to what goes on behind the scenes of Alinea.

Yeah, so who else just got a really bad case of this after the past several posts?

Sopressata. Mmmm.

That's the price mechanism coordinating consumer demand with supply. The only way for prices to come down is for individuals to cease demanding it so much, or magically increasing the supply of vintage wines.

How to Steal a Four-Star Chef's Secret Cooking Technology—By Building It Yourself This was on Gizmodo today.

Optimum salt intake is very different in everyone. Regulating it is pointless. How about just spreading knowledge and educating people instead of running to the coercive State? But, the war on salt is already underway. I'm sure many company's are already researching some just splendid alternatives. It's okay if people want to eat food with some strange chemical contrivance that tastes indistinctly like salt, but don't make the State force that on everyone.

Amen.

This is precisely what I wish to see and do.

Perhaps. But, I'm going nuts with fervor for the first Chicago guide which is due in a few weeks.