"achatz" news and stories

Not every home cook is content with working with the usual tools of the home kitchen, especially not if they follow the ideas and techniques of molecular gastronomists like Grant Achatz or Ferran Adria (or Steven and Marcel from Top Chef, for that matter). Wired has come up with a gift list for cooks interested in practicing nanogastronomy in their own home.

The first, and most obvious, gift that they suggest is a trip to one of the havens of molecular gastronomy, like El Bulli in Spain, Alinea or Moto in Chicago, WD-50 in New York, or The Fat Duck in England. Heston Blumenthal's Kitchen Chemistry includes a cd with video clips to help provide visuals for the technical information included in the book. Once the basics are in place, all the would-be chef needs are tools. Try an insulated whipped cream maker for experimenting with hot and cold mousses, a vacuum sealer for sous vide cooking or a dehydrator (also useful for raw foodists who need gifts) for turning otherwise wet foods into powders and garnishes.

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You know the restaurant Alinea in Chicago, right? If you don't , well, where the hell have you been for the last year?!

We've seen photo reports before, we just can't get enough. Fatemah of San Francisco-based blog Gastronomie recently dined at Alinea and is taking her time posting about her experience there, with a an entire post dedicated to each course. The above is the first course of a warm potato (among other things) impaled on an acupuncture needle over a bowl of chilled potato soup. Pictures, of course, are beautiful, but her descriptions and reactions are fun to read, too.

Watch out Geroge Foreman - this anti-griddle will knock you out.

In the spirit of Grant Achatz's uber-technological cuisine, PolyScience has what they call the Anti-griddle, a cooktop that, instead of heating foods to cook, freezes them. The "cooking" surface can reach down to creativity-chilling -30F, freezing foods on contact. According to PolyScience, it allows imaginations create "tantalizing dual-textures [that] help satisfy increasing consumer demands for new dining experiences."

Not sure if this is something you'd want in your home kitchen, but if you're innovative enough, and you have $845, you just might.

[via BoingBoing]