So right up front, we are going to admit that today is Videos Filmed In Nick Kokonas’s Kitchen Day here at MenuPages. Earlier we had his kids kicking butt at a recipe from the Alinea cookbook, and now we have Nick and Grant Achatz rocking out with some witty banter. Seriously, these two should start a tv show. Or at the very least, they should make videos like these more often.
The setup is flawless, really: Grant plays the so-genius-we-can-barely-fathom-it mind behind the provocative dishes at Alinea. Nick — who off-camera is the Robert Duffy to Grant’s Marc Jacobs — here switches hats and instead plays the Watson to Grant’s Holmes, in this endlessly entertaining video of the two men sous vide-ing (what’s the gerund for that, anyway?) a turkey.
Highlights:
- Grant suggesting that you cook all the parts of the turkey separately, and reattach them for serving using meat glue.
- Nick has duck fat and bacon fat and butter in his home at the time of filming.
- Nick to Grant: “Speaking of which, you should be drinking right now.” (3:15) And then Nick busts out a bottle of “breakfast wine” — some sort of Austrian rose?
- Whoa, we think we might have the exact same backsplash in our kitchen that Nick does.
- The kitchen slang for a person who shakes a pan? “Pan-shaker.” (6:04)
- The breakfast wine gets used in the turkey-bone caramelization process! (7:00)
Coming up soon — Part 2!
Grant Achatz Thanksgiving – Part 1 [YouTube]
Alinea [MenuPages]
Alinea [Official Site]
