Alinea at Home

So it's the holidays and you might have a little time on your hands. If you're ambitious and want a challenge, how about baking some cookies? There are some other people who will take being a home gourmet to the next level like Carol Blymire, who, judging from her actions, I would consider to be clinically insane. In 2007, Blymire took on the notoriously complicated French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller and cooked every recipe in the book. This year, she's taking on Alinea by Grant Achatz. Achatz, a Chicago-based chef, is something of a wunderkind who was diagnosed with tongue cancer early on in his career. His treatment impaired his ability to taste tremendously. And yet, Achatz is one of the most celebrated chefs in the world. It could be hype ... who knows. There's a inspiring piece by the New Yorker about Achatz here with pictures of his food.

In any case, if you have a look at the food, you'll immediately have a sense of how stupid it is to try to replicate it at home. And yet Blymire has been fairly successful at her attempts so far in the past 3 months. See her culinary insanity here, where she attempts to make the hot mess of bacon, apple and thyme pictured above.