It's Over

No, I'm not talking about the tragedy of Mother's Cookies going out of business, though that did make me unbelievably sad.

I'm actually talking about the French Laundry at Home blog. I heard about this blog sometime last year, and have been reading it regularly since early this year. It would seem that I missed most of the fun and excitement, though I was happy to read along as Carol finally prepared her last recipe: Cornets. I was surprised that she saved this one for last, since I think that that's the first recipe that I (and a lot of other people who have either purchased The French Laundry Cookbook or have been so lucky to have dined at The French Laundry) think of when I think of either the book or the restaurant. But I like her reasoning. When I read the recipe I thought, "I bet I could do that without too many problems." When she read it she apparently thought, "I'm not going to do this one without making sure I can do it justice." And it seems that she has.

Carol seems to have posted her last post at that blog, but there is good news. She's decided to attack another cookbook: Alinea.

Grant Achatz, the owner/chef of Alinea, served as sous chef to Thomas Keller, owner/chef of The French Laundry, for a few years. I think that as a lot of people (including myself) watched Achatz move up in the cooking world, they started to wish that he would put out a book. When I found out about the book, oh, 6 months or so ago, I don't think 5 minutes had passed before the pre-order site had my credit card number on file.

About a week or two ago, I started reading posts from bloggers who had already gotten their copy. I grew increasingly jealous and worried with each passing day that my copy did not arrive. On Monday, it came. But as a testament to how busy this week has been, I only got to look through maybe a quarter of it before flying out to Pittsburgh for a couple of days. I don't know how many recipes I'll be able to get through; I'm unfortunately fresh out of ingredients like methyl cellulose. But I'll do what I can.

Those of you that are interested in new frontiers of cooking, now's a good time to check out the Alinea at Home blog. It looks like it'll be starting up next week. I know I'm looking forward to it.