Alinea

The new Alinea cookbook was waiting for me at work today. I'm normally not one for these big coffee table cookbooks (more food po$n than food thought), but Alinea is so interesting that I felt I had to have it. Plus, at $31.50 from Amazon, it's a good deal for so many great photographs.

I've started to flip through it now. The first thing that struck me was Grant Achatz, the chef at Alinea, talking about El Bulli, in Spain (where Achatz spent a three day stage, or internship):

"It was almost as if I was on a different planet. There's nobody butchering meat, there's no veal stock simmering, there are no saute pans."

And this was a good thing?