Book review: Grant Achatz's Alinea

Not for the fainthearted

Carly Goncalves is inspired by the unconventional thinking of US chef Grant Achatz.

Seldom has the release of a cookbook been more anticipated than Grant Achatz's Alinea (Achatz: 2008), especially among chefs, industry professionals and the food media.

Achatz, only 35, burst onto the scene, being named one of the best new chefs in America by Food & Wine magazine in 2002 before receiving the Rising Star Award from the James Beard Foundation in 2003. Before opening Chicago's Alinea restaurant in 2005, he was the sous chef at The French Laundry under Thomas Keller and then executive chef at Trio in Chicago.

But it was a short stint at elBulli in Spain that fi nally unlocked Achatz's genius. Gourmet magazine later pronounced Alinea the best new restaurant in the country one year after opening and he was named the James Beard Best Chef in America in 2008.

Achatz is viewed as a gastronomic wunderkind. He continues to innovate, picking up where elBulli's Ferran Adrià leaves off in terms of new techniques. Taking molecular gastronomy to the next level, his tasting menu at Alinea has been described as a sensory experience that takes your breath away.

His long-awaited cookbook, too, is more than just a collection of recipes but a work of art. Huge, modern and chic, it boasts exquisite, cutting-edge photography. But it has also had its fair share of criticism, with pundits describing the recipes as inaccessible and far too complicated for the average cook.

I agree that this is not a book for the unadventurous cook, but I am sure that whoever purchases it will become a better, more inventive cook because of it.

In fact, the difficulty of the recipes might seem less of a barrier than access to the special equipment and out-of-theordinary ingredients.

But all of these things can be found quite easily on the Internet and, in many cases, the home cook does not need to invest in the expensive equipment. For example, a thermal circulator for sous vide cooking can be substituted with a large pot of water on the stove and a digital thermometer.

There are over 600 recipes beautifully spread out over 400 pages. The fantastic thing is that each dish has so many components - sometimes over 20 in one recipe! - and you can just take one or two of them and work them into something slightly simpler.

For example, you can take a piece of fi sh whose cooking method appeals to you and pair it with, say, a fennel purée from somewhere else in the book, add a sauce from a different recipe and perhaps one or two other components - and there you go, you are using the book as Achatz intended, and doing what the chefs at Alinea do: innovating as opposed to following each recipe from point to point.

Purchase of the book also gives you access to the Alinea-Mosaic website, containing bonus recipes, supplementary images, a behind-the-scenes perspective and a forum with Achatz and his team, who self-published the book so that their vision would not be compromised.

Whether you make many recipes from Alinea, just a couple, or none at all and it instead becomes a very impressive display item on your coff ee table, I believe it will be one of those rare instances of money well spent.

It retails for around R700 but you wouldn't expect innovation to come cheap - and innovation from one of the most articulate, thoughtful and intelligent chefs of our time is priceless.

Carly Goncalve's 9th Avenue Bistro in Durban was a worthy if lonely winner for KZN among the 2009 Prudential Eat Out Top 10 Restaurants.