Categories
cooking

Pasta Dinner

black truffle explosions

For our first multi-course meal at our new place in Hayward, I spent a lot of time brainstorming a theme. My initial idea was to base it on ice cream because it would be completely prepped ahead and offer a unique twist. I found some really interesting recipes, including several savory ice cream options, but ultimately, I felt it would be too much sugar and too one-dimensional to be a complete meal.

My second option was to go with a potato theme, especially since I had always wanted to recreate the Hot Potato Cold Potato dish. However, I remembered that the last time I did it was also a potato-themed dinner, so I decided to switch things up and go with pasta and pasta-adjacent dishes instead.… Read the rest

Categories
cooking personal

A Michelin Tasting at Home

In the last year of COVID life I only made one multi course meal and it was a collection of old favourites that I put together for a Pandemic Thanksgiving meal. During the meal I was talking to our guests about those recipes when I realised that I hadn’t really made a truly new menu since my Potato Dinner of 2018. We got to talking about cookbooks at that meal and I brought out the Alinea and Manresa books to show people. I then spent the Christmas break going through the two books and marked out a selection of recipes that I thought were both interesting and practical to make at home.… Read the rest

Categories
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