Author: rahulnair

www.rahulnair.net

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Autocrossing the Hellcat

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

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cars thoughts

Dodge Charger Hellcat – Owners Review

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

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cooking

Fast Favourites

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

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cooking review

Alinea Kitchen Table Experience

Living in the Bay Area, I had heard of Alinea a few times but since I never had a reason to go to Chicago, I never investigated it as a destination restaurant like the Fat Duck. In fact when I did eventually go to Chicago for the first time we made a special trip to Moto instead since I was a big fan of Homaru Cantu’s Iron Chef episode with Morimoto. All that changed when I saw the Grant Achatz episode of Chefs table and Alinea instantly went to the top of my list based on its presentation alone. It took several months but I was finally able to get a group of 6 California friends willing to fly out to Chicago and do the full Alinea Kitchen Table experience on a cold night in December.… Read the rest

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cooking photos

Egg Dinner

One of the dinner themes I have been toying with for a while is “Eggs” and I finally got to try it out over the weekend. It ended up being a 13 course meal over 6 hours where everything included eggs, looked like eggs or looked like something that should have eggs in it. It was fairly successful with only a few minor hiccups along the way despite several of the dishes being first time attempts. The spectacular photos were all taken by Nithya using her DIY lightbox setup. The following is a description of the dishes with any tips and tricks I discovered along the way.… Read the rest