An Alinea Thanksgiving, Part One
So right up front, we are going to admit that today is Videos Filmed In Nick Kokonas's Kitchen Day here at MenuPages. Earlier we had his kids kicking butt at a recipe from the Alinea cookbook, and now we have Nick and Grant Achatz rocking out with some witty banter. Seriously, these two should start a tv show. Or at the very least, they should make videos like these more often.
The setup is flawless, really: Grant plays the so-genius-we-can-barely-fathom-it mind behind the provocative dishes at Alinea. Nick — who off-camera is the Robert Duffy to Grant's Marc Jacobs — here switches hats and instead plays the Watson to Grant's Holmes, in this endlessly entertaining video of the two men sous vide-ing (what's the gerund for that, anyway?) a turkey.
Highlights:
- Grant suggesting that you cook all the parts of the turkey separately, and reattach them for serving using meat glue.
- Nick has duck fat and bacon fat and butter in his home at the time of filming.
- Nick to Grant: "Speaking of which, you should be drinking right now." (3:15) And then Nick busts out a bottle of "breakfast wine" — some sort of Austrian rose?
- Whoa, we think we might have the exact same backsplash in our kitchen that Nick does.
- The kitchen slang for a person who shakes a pan? "Pan-shaker." (6:04)
- The breakfast wine gets used in the turkey-bone caramelization process! (7:00)
Coming up soon — Part 2!
Grant Achatz Thanksgiving -- Part 1 [YouTube]
Alinea [MenuPages]
Alinea [Official Site]
Comments
Why have I been wary of sous-vide again? These guys make it look too easy.
Here's hoping Kokonas and Achatz replace Rachel Ray's ubiquitous media presence. Yes, I'll even take a talk show with these guys, please! All I want for Christmas is for "panshaker" to replace nauseating catch phrases like "EVOO" and "Yum-O."
Posted by: consumatron | November 25, 2008 05:07 PM