Bryan and Michael Voltaggio

I love food and love to cook, and I enjoy experimenting in the kitchen. My husband and my two daughters and I are all Top Chef fans, and a couple of years ago there were two brothers competing, Bryan and Michael Voltaggio, who were clearly on another level than the rest of the chefs in the competition. The brothers put out a cookbook in 2011, and my younger daughter wanted to buy it for my older daughter, who had said she really wanted it, for Christmas. It was an expensive $40 hardcover, so my younger daughter and I went in on it together. I noticed that nothing ever got made from it, and at one point when I mentioned it my daughter said that everything was too hard and needed special ingredients. Last weekend, my sister gave me a molecular gastronomy kit as a belated Christmas gift, and I thought what better time than now to flip through the Voltaggio book, Volt ink., to find something on which to try out the kit.

Well. A more pretentious cookbook I have never come across. Almost every recipe requires a thermal immersion circulator, a vacuum sealer and bags, and a long list of specialty ingredients. Above the beautifully photographed food read quotes from one or the other of the brothers, in a block of all-cap text in varying levels of boldness and point size, with some words reading vertically rather than horizontally, all clearly meant to show how important (and quirky) it all is (sample:
FOR THIS DISH I WANTED TO
MAKE A RICE
PAPER
THAT REALLY
TASTED LIKE SOMETHING
SO I MADE MY OWN
OUT OF JASMINE RICE STOCK)

My favorite quote,

ONE NIGHT AT BAZAAR
JOSE DEMANDED ONLY
SALT EGG WHITES
AND A FISH
IT WAS AN IMPORTANT LESSON
ABOUT SIMPLICITY AND
USING THE BEST INGREDIENTS

was attached to a recipe for Salt-Crusted Snapper, Cinnamon Eggplant, and Charcoal Vinaigrette, which had 26 ingredients, including Meyer lemon, petite cinnamon basil leaves, white sesame seeds, and smoked Maldon salt, and required the use of said thermal immersion circulator and vacuum sealer and bags, as well as a deep fryer.

I bought this book in Barnes & Noble, but I have a hard time picturing any home cook making use of it.… (lisätietoja)