Reddit reviews Alinea

A lot of famous restaurants and chefs have cookbooks that feature recipes from their restaurants.

It can be pretty hard to replicate a restaurant dish at home. I cook for a living and you have a lot of advantages in a professional kitchen. Hotter ovens and burners and all kinds of other toys.

So the recipes in restaurant cookbooks aren't always the most reliable when you do them at home. And the cookbooks are pricey. But they have pretty pictures.

If you want to get really crazy try one of these,


Mugaritz: A Natural Science of Cooking

or

Alinea

or

Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine

The Alinea cookbook has several dessert recipes and is beautiful

Alinea https://www.amazon.com/dp/1580089283/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_zIIBzbCXCSD9V

Some cookbooks that I use or are on my wishlist:

• The Fat Duck
  
  
• The French Laundry
  
  
• Alinea
  
  
• Eleven Madison Park
  
  
• Quay: food inspired by nature
  
  
• Room for Dessert
  
  
• Murgaritz: A Natural Science of Cooking
  
  
• Saison
  
  
• Rasoi: New Indian Kitchen
  
  
• Le Cinq
  
  
• Coi: Stories and Recipes
  
  
• Massimo Bottura: Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef
  
  
• Atelier Crenn: Metamorphosis of Taste
  
  
• El Celler De Can Roca
  
  Great British Chefs also has some recipes from Michelin starred restaurants.

Alinea is a great cookbook that will open your mind to new cooking techniques and flavor combinations. Many of the recipes aren't extraordinarily difficult and there are a good number that don't require exotic ingredients. (Apart from a handful of special molecular gastronomy specific items that are listed in the preface.)

Thomas Keller's Sous Vide book is a good read, too. Setup for sous vide is only about $400. (generous estimates: $150 for PID device, $50 for rice cooker, $150 for vacuum sealer, $50 for blowtorch) Not bad at all considering anyone mildly-adept at cooking can put out steaks that will kick most steakhouses to the curb, and because a rice cooker, vacuum sealer, and blowtorch are all very useful pieces of kitchen equipment on their own. Apart from information you can get online, this book is (as far as I know) the only book in English that will really teach you sous vide.

Well, I'm half-Chinese. I'll give you two cookbook recommendations which are full of recipes which really resonate with that part of my background:

• Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo. While I'm generally not big on Chinese cookbooks not specializing in one or two regional cuisines, this book gets a pass because it's so organized and pedantic. It builds itself up from simple to complex and includes recipes which build on each other. It also features a large section on ingredients. An additional pro is that it includes the Chinese characters which makes it easier to find the proper product at your Asian grocer. I love it so much that I lugged this book to Taiwan with me and used it as my cooking guide/reference.
  
• Land of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlop. Of all the regional Chinese cuisines with which I have experience, I love the multi-layered flavors of Sichuan the most. It was through Dunlop's book that I first discovered this magnificent cuisine and it encouraged me to discover some of the Sichuanese restaurants in the Bay Area. Instructions are clear and she does a great job bringing Sichanese food to life. An absolute must own if you are at all interested in regional Chinese food. Her book on Hunanese food is also pretty killer.
  
  In addition to the aforementioned Chinese food, I'm just a fat piggy who loves to eat. Here are a few more recs:
  
  
• Thai Food by David Thompson. This is the bible of Thai food for English speakers. It's nearly 700 pages long and not a page is wasted on fluff. It's more than just a cookbook, it's a anthropological study on Thai people, their history and the way they eat. An immense book. If you are more into pictures, check out his book on Thai Street Food.
  
• Into the Vietnamese Kitchen by Andrea Nguyen. This was the book that really unlocked Vietnamese food for me. I adore how many fresh herbs/veggies are used and how it creates a complex, yet light, cuisine. And don't get me wrong when I say light...it's as full flavored as can be, but without heaviness. In the interim since this book came out, others have showed up on the market which are as good (see Charles Phan's recent book), but Nguyen's book will always have a special place in my heart.
  
• ad hoc at home by Thomas Keller. Thomas Keller is arguably the most important American chef of the past 20 years, so when he turns his sights on homestyle food, you can be sure it's done with correct technique and style. While this book isn't as notable as TFL cookbook or his sorta primer on sous vide cooking, I'm including it because it has recipes which people will actually use. Unparallelled technique, good recipes and delicious food equal a winning cookbook. One note: it's not dumbed down and some of the recipes take time, but everything I've ever made from it has been great.
  
• Alinea by Grant Achatz. {Disclaimer: I worked for Grant Achatz for a couple of years.} Everyone should own at least one cookbook which is completely out of reach, but serves to inspire. When you flip through this book, your jaw will drop and you will wonder, multiple times, "WTF?!?!?!" It's an amazing testament to how open and possible American cuisine is at the moment and you'll do yourself well to flip through it. Additionally, the photographs and the book itself are phenomenal. The paper, in particular, is well worth the price of admission. It's sexy shit, yo.
  
  Feel free to drop me a line if you need more recommendations. I've got quite the cookbook collection (I love to cook, it's not just cookbook porn) and love to share my thoughts.

I've eaten at Alinea, Moto, and quite a few other high end restaurants as a cooking enthusiast. Its hard to say one kind of food is better than another - however, one of the reasons you would eat at a place like Alinea because you could never reasonably make the dishes they make (unless you have some specialized and expensive lab equipment).

EDIT: I should mention that Achatz has an Alinea book where he outlines some of the recipes from the restaurant (http://www.amazon.com/Alinea-Grant-Achatz/dp/1580089283). I find this commentary quite appropriate: http://ruhlman.com/2008/09/alinea-the-cook/

>This is not a home-cook book. This is a document of the exact recipes the Alinea brigade uses. It's very complex stuff and some of the techniques are difficult to pull off, requiring a good deal of skill and delicacy.

$35 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1580089283/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_haHUDbFXKFCT7

Pastry cooks are hardly rare. Good ones are, though.

Get the Alinea cookbook and work your way through it, if you have the patience and the pocketbook. Very neat stuff, but really anal from a guy with zero taste buds. I respect him, but really... His most critical restaurant reviews are of his presentation and flavor combinations, so use your own judgement and taste buds while using this book. I recommend it as reading material, but follow your own head and area.

I would recommend a dozen or so books to get started. However, if I had to recommend one thing it would be this blog, as it dissects the first book from Alinea from the view point of a novice. It should make you think about cooking and food in a completely different way, and give you a head start into think about advanced concepts.