All weekend, Eater is coming to you live from the lovely Viceroy Snowmass hotel to report on all things Aspen Food & Wine Classic.
Yesterday, at the N9NE Steakhouse here in Aspen, Top Chef season 6 winner Michael Voltaggio (currently, but not for long of the Langham Huntington) and his brother Bryan (the chef/owner at Volt) displayed some high tech kitchen techniques for 20 or so media and guests, a slew of William Sonoma reps, and Phillip Preston, the founder of PolyScience and the coolest food gadget inventor in the U.S. (he works closely with Grant Achatz to create inventions for his kitchen).
They made an applewood smoked salmon dish with cream cheese "snow," (see the liquid nitrogen photo), sous vide harissa lamb with yogurt (globules which broke like a mini white egg yolks), and their version of a strawberry shortcake (in which the cake was baked in the microwave) with compressed strawberries.
They were there to show off what they can do, but mostly they were there to show off what some new kitchen gadgets. What stuck with us: there's the smoking gun for the home—a small device filled with aromatic woodchips that can impart smokiness to anything from salmon to ice cubes and that also looks like a bong—and the new Sous Vide Professional. It's $800, but you know, if that's how you roll, that's how you roll.
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