One of my favorite shows of all times is Good Eats. I was a science geek growing up, and always wanted to know how to cook. Good Eats has both (along with humor), and that makes it imminently watchable for me. About 2/3 of my 30 hour TiVo is taken up by saved episodes, and I three 7-hour VHS tapes full as well.

Over the past two years or so, I've found myself wanting to make more and more of the recipes featured on the show. Tess and I have made everything from pan-seared ribeye (makes the kitchen smell like grease, and not as good as from a hot grill) to meat loaf (I wouldn't make it any other way) to broiled, butterflied chicken (skip the peppercorn mixture) to scramled eggs (a lot more work, but it comes out nice). As you can see, we typically go for the big-ticket items. There's just usually a lot more preparation in making his recipes, since he tends to do things unusually.

My favorite recipe has got to be one called "Chimney Tuna Loin". It's super thick Ahi (Yellowfin) tuna steaks marinated in a honey/soy/wasabi mixture, rolled in sesame seeds and cooked over an exceedingly hot flame. It sounds foofy, but it's actually really easy to make and incredibly tasty. I could probably eat Ahi breakfast, lunch and dinner. If Ahi was as cheap as beef, I'd never touch a New York Loin again. It comes out very rare, melts in your mouth and has an amazingly rich flavor without weighing you down like beef can.

A couple weekends ago, I went out to Home Depot and such and bought all the necessary items to make seared tuna like he did on the show. It took me over two hours to find the tuna, but it turned out very well. I'm going to make it again tonight, but I'm not going to cook the tuna over a chimney coal starter like he recommends. My starter must be a lot smaller than his since I can't flip the steaks from the cold to hot side. So I'm going to load the Weber up as much charcoal as I can and see if it gets hot enough. I might pair it up with some rice and maybe a bowl of miso soup (although the tuna is pretty salty all by itself).

Because I couldn't remember the recipe for the marinade/dipping sauce, I just went looking for that episode's recipes on the web. I discovered that one problem with Good Eats is actually not a problem with Good Eats at all. It's a problem with Food TV's web site. It blows. Their recipe search means you have to spend ten minutes looking for anything, and since Alton Brown tend to use weird titles for his recipes, the foodtv.com search engine comes up short nearly every time (or it comes uip with 100+ results). A better solution is to check out the Good Eats Fan Page. It has a recipe list which is organized by both title and subject. You find what you want, and get linked over to foodtv.com recipe database. Takes about 20 seconds to find what you're looking for.

The GEFP site also has an incredible amount of other info about everything relating to Good Eats. It has information even Alton himself couldn't find elsewhere (it's sad Alton didn't link to Mike's site; it took me a while to find it via google and the guy deserves props since he puts a lot of work into the fan site). I've wasted a couple hours wading through the trivia on the site. The story of Alton's watch was pretty amusing. The interview with Alton pages are going to need some more time. There's a lot of stuff to read there.

Oh, before I forget: Alton has a new book coming out soon. It's called "Alton Brown's Gear for Your Kitchen" and it will be released in October 2003. In addition to everything else, I'm also a gadget freak, so I expect I'll be pre-ordering a copy.