All posts by rahulnair

About rahulnair

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Spa-Francorchamps

cars, motorsport, personal, photos, track days, videos, , , ,

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A couple of slow laps (3:17s) from Spa – unfortunately I did not get good video on day 1 when the weather was much better. My theoretical best was 3:11 which I am pretty happy with for a FWD GTI hatchback rented from RSR Spa.

Eau Rouge really is as difficult as they say and the track has a bunch of corners that require way more trust in the car and your abilities than I had for my first time there. This was my first international track day and Book-A-Track did a great job. It was a bit weird to only pass on the left but they ran a great event and I liked the open track (non-session) aspect of it.… Read the rest

Chilli-Lime Chorizo in Corn Foam recipe

cooking, personal, thoughts, , , ,

One of the most interesting things I ate last year was the Esquites at Californios. It consists of some butter poached lobster and corn kernels sprinkled with mexican spices and then covered with a warm corn mousse on top. I loved the flavour profile of the dish with the contrasts between the sweet mousse and the spiced corn/lobster at the bottom. Nithya and I liked it so much that we decided to make our own version below.

Untitled

Ingredients (serves 6-8)

  • 1 cups Corn (for cream)
  • 2 cups Half and Half
  • 1/2 cup Corn (for roasting)
  • 200g Chorizo
  • 1-2 limes
  • Chilli powder to taste
  • Salt to taste
  • Butter

Required Equipment

  • Blender
  • Sieve
  • Whipping Siphon

Steps

  1. We will start by making the corn cream.
… Read the rest

3rd Cousin

review, thoughts, , , ,

3rd Cousin
Recently I’ve been getting a large number of Facebook Ads for a new restaurant in SF called 3rd Cousin and in an example of well targeted advertising I ended up checking their menu when I was looking for a new dinner place. The dishes looked very interesting and they had an available spot so we signed up for their grand tasting which is 10 courses of the greatest hits from the menu.

Hamachi Crudo
We get started with the Hamachi Crudo which was my favourite dish of the night. A clean simple preparation with the acid from the yuzu making a nice contrast with the fish.… Read the rest

Potato Dinner

cooking, , , , , ,

After a year long hiatus from doing my home tasting menus, I got the urge to a do a new one around the humble potato which led to last weekend Potato dinner. We have a total of 7 diners which did slow down the plating, but having done this several times I have gotten much better at managing my time and we were done with the 7 savory courses in just under 3.5 hours despite this meal including some fairly complex dishes as well as one multi-item course.

Hot Potato Cold Potato
Hot Potato Cold Potato is a classic Alinea appetizer that has a hot ball of butter poached potato that is dropped into a cold potato soup made with truffle juice.… Read the rest

2013 Lotus Evora S IPS For Sale

cars, personal, , , ,

Update: Car is sold

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After 3 fun years of Evora ownership I am looking for a new owner to care for my 2013 Evora S IPS. I originally purchased the car in 2015 and it served as my daily driver for 2 years and ~15k miles. The car has always been serviced by either DietschWerks or TrackSpec who are the premier independent Lotus mechanics in the Bay Area.

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I have written about the car before and can confirm my original assessment that it is a fantastic street car and serviceable on track. Luckily I have enough cars to choose from so this Evora has seen only 2 track days and has spent the rest of its life as a street car.… Read the rest

The French Laundry review

cooking, thoughts, ,

Took us 10 years to finally get a reservation
For foodies in the Bay Area, there is one fine dining place that we all have on our bucket list – The French Laundry. Nithya and I have had the pleasure of dining at Per Se and doing the French Laundry retrospective at Next, but we never managed to get reservations to the big daddy. However TFL moved to a ticket based reservation system last year and that allowed us to finally scored a dinner reservation for he birthday a few weeks ago.

Tuna tartare cornet
The first course was this cornet of tuna tartare. They usually serve this dish with Salmon tartare but this night it was tuna instead and just as delicious as before.… Read the rest

Rockets Away!

Uncategorized

Last weekend I was lucky enough to see an Atlas V rocket launch from Vandenburg AFB. We are all jaded from seeing things on video every day but I highly recommend watching a launch if you ever get a chance – it is a spectacular event and being a night launch we got a much better perspective on just how bright the exhaust gets.

More info and a much better video is available at SpaceFlightNow.… Read the rest

Autocrossing the Hellcat

Uncategorized

Last weekend I autocrossed the Hellcat for the very first time at the GGLC AutoX in Marina. Unfortunately it was a very, very tight course which meant that I had no chance to really put the power down. My best time (below) was a 51.4 while the Elise’s were getting down in the 46-47 range.

This is definitely not something I will do again though I still do want to take it at a track day where it should do much better as they usually dont have too many rapid direction changes. Also I wish Dodge had a mode to see the current gear in big central display, the current display is so tiny that I cant really keep track of the paddle selected gear in the rapid fire autocross environment – another thing that should be better on track.… Read the rest

Dodge Charger Hellcat – Owners Review

cars, thoughts, , ,

Late last year Nithya and I decided to start looking for a more fun daily driver to replace our Ford Flex Ecoboost which had served us faithfully for ~5 years. Our only requirements were that it be fun, faster than the flex and be able to haul the dogs around as well. My initial thought was to look at AMG Wagons and I even bid on one at Bring a Trailer which I missed out on by just $1k. Since they are relatively rare and hard to find I decided to expand the search and look for other fun wagons and sedans.… Read the rest

Fast Favourites

cooking, ,

Now that I have started my new gig at Apple I no longer have the time to investigate and plan super elaborate meals like the Egg Dinner. However having done a bunch of these in the past we decided to make our March dinner a set of Fast Favourites – dishes that we have tried before and do not take too much time to prepare on the day of the meal. So without further ado, lets dive right into the menu.

Farm Egg
We got started with the classic Manresa Farm Egg. It was a huge amount of work and testing when I made it for the egg dinner, but now that I have a reliable method of topping the eggs I no longer had to prepare the yolks in advance and sanitize the shells overnight.… Read the rest