Alinea, a highly-acclaimed restaurant in Chicago, which is known for its avant-garde approach to food, just released its first cookbook. Titled after the restaurant, “Alinea” has nearly 400 pages and is loaded with beautiful full-page color photos and tons of recipes.

Grant Achatz, the chef at Alinea, is known for pushing the envelope with food. His cooking techniques include many new and innovative methods (dubbed as molecular gastronomy), and his flavor combinations most often blur the line between savory and sweet traditions.

Many of the recipes in the book are not designed for the home cook. The ingredients (eucalyptus oil and agar agar to make pudding) and tools (a Pacojet and a refractometer to make sorbet) needed to complete his dishes would require stops at several stores and thousands of dollars to assemble. However, being a professional chef with the resources for these things, I like that about the book and will actually find myself trying the recipes out at work.

But, for a home cook, this book represents a fantastic perspective of the direction some very high-end chefs are taking their food. It also makes a glorious coffee table book with photos to entertain the eye of even the most disinterested eater. And for $50, I can’t think of a more affordable way to introduce someone to this new world of cookery (the last time I ate at Alinea is was a whopping $500 per person…).

Filed Under: Cool Stuff