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The Alinea Cookbook


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The website is supposed to be out today, the birthday of Alinea. I saw Chef Achatz early this morning at Alinea. They have been working feverishly to get this going. I am happy to report that other than appearing to be (understandably) a little tired, Chef Achatz is looking quite well and his food and this project remain things to very much look forward to.

John Sconzo, M.D. aka "docsconz"

"Remember that a very good sardine is always preferable to a not that good lobster."

- Ferran Adria on eGullet 12/16/2004.

Docsconz - Musings on Food and Life

Slow Food Saratoga Region - Co-Founder

Twitter - @docsconz

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Just got this email:

Dear Christopher,

Thank you for your early purchase of the Alinea book.  Today is Alinea's

third anniversary and we thought it would be the ideal moment to launch the

beta of the Alinea Mosaic.  While the book will ship to AlineaBook.com

buyers the first week of October and will be in book stores October 15th,

the beta Mosaic will allow us to expand the site while sharing the content

of the book and bonus material with you over the next 5 months.

The Mosaic you will see today is just the start.  It includes a number of

recipes from the book, reformatted for the web; 4 videos which demonstrate

cooking techniques used at Alinea along with Chef Achatz' commentary;

hi-res photos; and a user forum where the Alinea Book community may

interact directly with Grant, Nick, Martin, and the chefs and staff of

Alinea.  Coming features include a sneak peak at pages from the book;

interactively annotated recipes, essays on dining and food, cooking

demonstration videos, slide shows, and even live web-cams of special

events.  We will also be including more recipes from the book as well as

those recipes that for one reason or another were not included in the

book.

You can access the site at:  http://alineamosaic.com/launch/

We encourage you to provide your feedback and ideas to us.  The Alinea

Book and the Mosaic are crafted by a small group of people at Alinea.  Any

requests you make, feedback you give, and ideas you share are highly

valued.

So please sign on, look around, and check back often over the next few

months.

See you in the Mosaic...

Chef Achatz and the Alinea Book Team

More a bit later today.

Chris Amirault

eG Ethics Signatory

Sir Luscious got gator belts and patty melts

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Got my logon information today but I won't have time to check it out until tonight. Dammit. :biggrin:

Okay, I lied. I couldn't resist logging on and taking a quick peek but I need to be working so I'll still have to wait to really check it out.

Edited by Tri2Cook (log)

It's kinda like wrestling a gorilla... you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is tired.

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It will be interesting to see if anyone is going to cook their way through The Alinea Book. Just looking at a few of the recipes there are some really cool parts to them I will certainly try. Whole recipes even. The whole thing? Chefg will need to have a job waiting for me. :D

I love the layout of the website, and the recipes are really well explained. The videos are a great feature. Bravo! I'm Bricktop in the Alinea forums too, though I haven't posted yet.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

I was lucky enough to see a draft of the whole book and it will be worth the wait. The pics were in black and white but really show the process of the recipes and how the dishes come together. You will have a great example of how the restaurant works from the essays in the book as well. I think it ranks up there with the best of them.

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  • 2 months later...

I just ran across this post on Michael Ruhlman's blog about the forthcoming book by Chef Grant Achatz: "Alinea" (book website here). It looks like an incredible tome, especially at the current price, so naturally I pre-ordered it, but I kinda doubt I will be cooking anything out of it. It looks to me more like a book of art, purchased in the same way one might purchase a book on Michelangelo. I've never eaten at Alinea, but I get the feeling that the recipes are going to be a bit out of my league. Is anyone else looking forward to this one?

Chris Hennes
Director of Operations
chennes@egullet.org

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I just ran across this post on Michael Ruhlman's blog about the forthcoming book by Chef Grant Achatz: "Alinea" (book website here). It looks like an incredible tome, especially at the current price, so naturally I pre-ordered it, but I kinda doubt I will be cooking anything out of it. It looks to me more like a book of art, purchased in the same way one might purchase a book on Michelangelo. I've never eaten at Alinea, but I get the feeling that the recipes are going to be a bit out of my league. Is anyone else looking forward to this one?

I ordered the book almost a year ago and cannot wait to get my hands on it! As for cooking from it, maybe whole recipes will not be as accessible, certainly not on a regular basis, but I'm willing to bet that there is a lot to learn from technique, sub-recipes and other "base" recipes. From the mosaic website you can see that while certain recipes are very involved, others can be tackled at home if you are ambitious enough.

E. Nassar
Houston, TX

My Blog
contact: enassar(AT)gmail(DOT)com

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I have had a proof copy of the Alinea cookbook for a couple of months now and there are a few recipes which are can be done without a lot of work and have come out very good and a whole bunch that are very complicated which I haven't even thought of attempting. This book is going to be a gem!

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I'm definitely looking forward to it. I fully intend to work from the book. I'm sure I won't work through the entire book, I've never done that with any book, but I'll definitely do some of the dishes and probably make use of a lot of the components and techniques in other settings.

It's kinda like wrestling a gorilla... you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is tired.

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Not everything Alinea is super complicated. I did the potato and truffles hot and cold (forgot the exact name, but it is cold potato soup with hot parisienne potatoes and truffles) from the website and that was both easy and pretty quick.

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I just wish I had not bought the access to the site, new content of Mosaic stopped a long time ago. And when I do attempt the forum it always kicks me out even with the right password.

Edited by adey73 (log)
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I just wish I had not bought the access to the site, new content of Mosaic stopped a long time ago. And when I do attempt the forum it always kicks me out even with the right password.

I thought access to the site came with the book? Is that just if you ordered it through the Alinea Book site (which I did) or is my access going to end at some point unless I pay to keep it?

It's kinda like wrestling a gorilla... you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is tired.

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Not everything Alinea is super complicated. I did the potato and truffles hot and cold (forgot the exact name, but it is cold potato soup with hot parisienne potatoes and truffles) from the website and that was both easy and pretty quick.

Hot Potato, Cold Potato.

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