About Culinary Stratosphere

What is Culinary Stratosphere?  
The stratosphere of course is literally the atmospheric layer between the troposphere and the mesosphere.  Or in other words, really high up in the sky.  The "stratosphere" in the foody's vocabulary is becoming a trendy word to describe the area from which the best chefs in the world come from.  It is rare real estate and many aspire to be a part of it.  I have attached the word "culinary" to "stratosphere" to encompass not just the great chefs, but the lessons we can learn from them in terms of flavor, ingredients, cooking techniques, etc.  It is a loose term that applies to many things related to good food and eating.    

Visitors of Culinary Stratosphere will see my attempts at recipes from both known and obscure world-class chefs.  Building awareness of the "who’s who" of the stratosphere is a primary function of this blog.  Alongside observing great chefs, we will also spend a great deal of effort reviewing and recommending great cookbooks that provide solid recipes and cooking information.   

I have a good database started of some great chefs, but I certainly don’t claim to know about every chef out there.  Simply put, this is a "I learn, you learn, we all learn" circumstance.  So leave your contributing comments and suggestions of other chefs you think are a part of the stratosphere.  I also want to learn about the cookbooks that you think are informative so that I may check them out and get cracking on some recipes!

How it Works
Each video recipe post will include brief written information about the chef and cookbook that produced the recipe, the cooking methods behind the dish, and ingredient information (amounts & preparation, seasonality, sources, etc).  I will always post the original unadulterated ingredient amounts of the recipe.  You will see my variations of the recipe amounts and methods in bold-faced type and I will often include notes on what I did different.  I will not provide the step-by-step instructions from the cookbooks!  This is why I am going through all the trouble of videotaping my efforts.  Its very important to keep in mind that a recipe is only a guideline and there is a lot of room for interpretation.  This is in no way dishonoring the original recipes of these chefs.  It is no different from someone videotaping themselves performing "Stairway to Heaven" on their guitar and posting the original guitar tabs...its going to sound different every time!  Everyone has their own approach to cooking, I have my own based on my level of experience.  My goal with these videos is to show you how I would do these recipes to ensure the best success. 

Lastly, in order to shake things up a bit (and to allow for me to have a life) I will add random posts that may pertain to cool blogs I found, other food-related links, or even quick articles about what some chefs are doing these days to make waves in the industry.  Anything is free for discussion and I encourage you to comment on my posts with feedback. 

Thanks for stopping by,

Nick Lombardo