Our Truffle Flight from the first Keller/Achatz Dinnner
The days were long and grueling. The mornings were filled with recipe writing and research on ingredients suppliers, purveyors and manufactures. Deliveries would arrive between 1000-1300 and testing would begin about 1600; lasting into the wee hours of the evening, with a rotating cast floating in and out of my apartment with casual regard an energy that was constantly refreshing and inspiring.
About a week out from our first set of events we were pretty sure we had a good idea of what we were going to serve for the dishes outlined on the simple printed menus we had been basing our dinners on. It was at this point that a burgeoning friendship with Nick Kokonas (the owner of Alinea) provided us simultaneously with the most beneficial and detrimental tool in our quest. He was able to get us a very extensive set of photographs that were captured by Lara Kastner at the per se dinner.
This provided us with a conundrum as the photos enabled us to answer all of the questions we had when we were trying to extrapolate the simple menu descriptions but we had already committed hours of practice and testing to the recipes we had written which were no longer relevant to the actual dishes. So in what could have been the worst decision we had made for our sanity we decided to rewrite all of the recipes and try to execute the dishes exactly the way they were served originally.
With 72 hours before service was to being on Friday December 12th, 2008 we started to prepare and write simultaneously. Working around the clock, while shuffling our day jobs and the fleeting extraneous bits of our lives we pushed forward and into one of the longest dinners ever.
Truffle Flight:
© 2008 Lara Kastner. If you would like to see more photos from the Keller/Achatz Dinners please visit Lara's site and look through her Cuisine Portfolio
Keller:
Truffle Oil-Infused Custard
“Ragout” of Black Winter Truffles
White Truffles from Alba
Celery Branch and Celery Root Mousse
Achatz:
Black Truffle Explosion
Romaine, Parmesan
Hot Potato-Cold Potato
Chive, Black Truffle
So'n'so
on Dec 27th, 2009
@ 10:17:
If I had a deity, I would invoke his name. It is so exciting to see that the level of intensity of G.A. and T.K. can be invoked and executed outside of a restaurant. I look forward to joining you!