Ad Hoc at Home

I decided to take up cooking as a hobby last year and went crazy bookmarking recipes online and bought a few cookbooks on Amazon while I was at it. I bought this book because I love eating at Bouchon and Ad Hoc (Thomas Keller fangirl here) and I liked how there was a wide variety of recipes (different meats/fish, vegetables/salads, baked goods, spreads, dips, etc) that were comfort food/traditional dishes, but with a slightly elevated touch... just like the food I love at Ad Hoc! Perhaps it is because of the beautiful pictures that I drool over in this book, but I reach for Ad Hoc at Home most often instead of my other cookbooks/extensive collection of recipes online. The first reason has to be the organization/layout of the book - the recipes are organized in sections depending on what type of dish you are going to make (meats, vegetables, sides, etc) and the way in which the recipes are written is easy to follow (I bought Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking at the same time and couldn't get over the way the recipes were written... I like having all the ingredients stated at the beginning of the recipe, then the procedure). The second reason has to be that I love Thomas Keller's voice throughout the book - he explains the techniques and why you need to prepare things a certain way/use certain ingredients/tools, and I have become a better cook as a result. I also love how this book helped to build my kitchen with tools/spices/ingredients that I now consider to be essential. If you aren't ready to add tools to your kitchen, I would like to note that this book will also teach you techniques that apply to things you already have. The most important reason why I cook from this book most often, however, has to be that everything I have made from this book has been absolutely delicious. My favorite recipes are the summer vegetable gratin (I made this for Thanksgiving and there were no leftovers), caramel ice cream, brownies, marinated skirt steak, and just about all of the potato recipes. Even the basic fish recipes are very good. That being said, I would not recommend this book to someone who is looking for 5 ingredient recipes to make for a 30 minute meal on a weeknight. The dishes definitely require planning ahead as you may have to brine your meats or you may have to hunt around for an unconventional ingredient like vanilla paste, piment d'espelette, Japanese eggplant, specific peppers, etc but I can't stress enough that it is always worth the effort! The directions are also very specific so that it'll take you a while to cook a recipe the first time (as a beginning cook, anyway), but you'll remember to set the butter out next time, or realize that you can caramelize onions the day before so that you can speed up the process next time. I have loved every single recipe I have made out of this book - the specificity of the recipes ensures that your results will be perfect (or delicious, anyway), and I cannot recommend this book enough. If you have the time or enjoy cooking one day a week to destress like I do, it will be worth it, and you will have flour all over the cover in no time.

This outstanding cookbook from the 'down scale' version of Thomas Keller's French Laundry is simply exceptional. The idea behind ad hoc was to do everyday cooking, but with Thomas Keller's extreme attention to detail. So, if you have cooked from The French Laundry, you know that a single entree or serving can be a multi-day process. You can get into the same sorts of time frames with this book (the recipes often include items that themselves are their own recipes, and you can have multiple items of this sort to include). But I think it's important to know that the extra things you will have to make are versatile items. Which leads me to what I think is the most valuable aspect of this and Keller's other books: the principles of French technique, combined with lots and lots of recipes for items you might want to combine, open the door for truly excellent cooking. Most are actually quite easy, but take time and a bit of attention. For example, garlic confit is an outstanding recipe called for by several of the dishes in ad hoc at home. It's a slow process, but once you have it, you will want to use it in just about anything you cook. It's that good. I also love the melted onion recipe, and the techniques on stock produce the best stock I have ever used. The roasted chicken recipe is another example of a little extra effort that goes with all the dishes in the book. Simple enough, until you apply Keller's brine, which requires heating it to a boil, then rapidly cooling it down in an ice bath, before plunging your chicken in for 6 hours or more. But the result is one of the best roasted chickens you will ever enjoy. That process, I found, means doing the brine the day before and then submerging the chicken the next day, to be cooked for dinner when you come home. There are indexes for all the cooking equipment and special ingredients. But again, the beauty of Keller's books are in the hints and tips that come with the specified techniques. I like his method for tying a chicken, for example. But even with something like the Potato Pave recipe (I paired this with a pan-seared steak and demi recipes of my own that was out of this world), Keller provides tips on how to get it out of the loaf pan without it coming apart (some aluminum foil in the bottom before laying out the layers of potatoes does the trick). Downsides to the book amount to positives for me. I'm a fairly advanced home cook. This book suits me and the fun I like to have with food chemistry. It is most definitely not for the beginner, nor is it for someone who wants to cook quickly. This book is for the enthusiast, someone who gets a charge out of going to the market, picking up the sale paper, buying the on-sale proteins and veggies of the week, and making outstanding food to enjoy with loved ones. If you have 30 minutes on a weeknight to throw together a meal for a bunch of grumpy baby and papa bears (moms too), this book is not for you. If you enjoy going to the market, prepping, cooking, presenting, the enjoyment scenario - and have ample time for such matters as you solve the world's problems - it is a must-have in any home library.

Lift your culinary game by learning the logic behind the recipe. Through detailed instructions and photographs - you can’t go wrong. Be inspired!

Es un libro de sencilla lectura y de muy fácil explicación. Thomas Keller logra transmitir con sencillez los pasos para conseguir las recetas en casa que contiene el libro. Muy recomendable.

A great cookery book with some innovative recipes, all delicious no doubt , that's my opinion based on the first two I tried, which were awesome!

Well, when you know it comes from Thomas Keller, you can already surmise its quality...and you get the feeling you just can't wait to open it and start delving into some of the beauteous recipes you know you will find within. Absolutely true--gorgeous. A note of caution, especially if you are a small person. This book is very heavy and is not the sort of thing you take into the kitchen, spread open beside you on the table while you are doing prep work as it is too big and heavy (of course, if you are a large person and have lots of space, that might be a different matter). I have my Ad Hoc laid out on my desk so that I can peruse at will easily. Expensive and gorgeous--I bought this present for myself. You should too. I recommend the Cauliflower Soup recipe--it is divine (except I have to be honest, I did not add cream after the milk complement).

Thomas Keller is the greatest chef in America. He's not a reality TV star. He's a businessman, a marketer with few peers, but above all - he's a perfectionist chef who takes cooking as an extremely serious matter. He doesn't expect even good amateur cooks to be able to pull off the recipes in his most difficult cookbooks, which are more art pieces than cookbooks. But Ad Hoc at Home is not intended to be pretty; Keller intends that it be used. And for that reason, of all of Thomas Keller's cookbooks released to date, Ad Hoc at Home is easily the most accessible and useful to a home cook. It's the one of Keller's five current cookbooks that you should buy first. Under Pressure is too technical and The French Laundry, while beautiful, is simply neither practical nor accessible as more than a coffee table book. Indeed, the late Julia Child, I expect, might well face a challenge recreating some of the recipes and techniques shown in The French Laundry. Those books from Keller are not really meant to be attempted to any serious degree by mere mortals. The books in the middle of Keller's difficulty curve, Bouchon and Bouchon Bakery, are both much more accessible than Under Pressure or The French Laundry, but each still pose a REAL challenge (especially many of the more exacting bistro recipes in Bouchon). The Bouchon books are for varsity level play. Mere mortals can get there, but you need to finish high school and your Freshman year first. To get to Bouchon, you must first pass Ad Hoc at Home first. And of his five books, Ad Hoc at Home is by far the easiest. Here, Keller is really trying to teach the reader not only how to cook his recipes, but **how to cook**. He doesn't hold your hand through *all* of this, that's not the kind of man he is -- nor the kind of book this is. However, he *does* show you - he just doesn't show you *twice*. He expects you to re-read it, attempt the simpler recipes and work on them until you "get it". He doesn't tell you this, but he certainly does assume that you are clever enough to sort out those implications on your own. Thomas Keller is not the sort of man who suffers fools gladly in his life -- that much is clear. He expects you to pay attention. For all that, to be fair to Keller, things are *mostly* well explained in Ad Hoc at Home and important matters are not left a mystery. But he takes all of this quite seriously and expects you to do so as well. The photographs are wonderful, the descriptions helpful and the end product of a properly executed recipe is something to be enjoyed and proud of. As Ad Hoc at Home ramps up, so do many of the recipes as you have to up your game. Some of them may prove to be difficult for some cooks, but you can pick out most of those at a glance. You cook this cow one recipe at a time. The great thing about Ad Hoc at Home, however, is that you WANT to be able to work your way up to attempting these more difficult recipes. As many of the recipes build off of and incorporate the finished products of other intermediary difficulty recipes presented elsewhere in the book, Keller presents a clear path to honing your skills and inspiring you to get better without ever feeling like he's pandering or dumbing it all down. He's not humouring us, he's deliberately *challenging* us. It's the intentional pedagogical strategy in the book and for the most part, it works very well on the sort of people at whom the book is directed. Whether you are one of those people or not, is entirely up to you to discover. All of Keller's books are beautiful and are real works of graphic art & design in their own right. Ad Hoc at Home is no different. It's big, it's thick, chic, and stylish; the paper is VERY heavy and the photography is as gorgeous and exacting as you would expect of a perfectionist like Thomas Keller. It may be displayed on your coffee table alongside or near his other works if you like and it certainly fits in. It is designed to do just that. But unlike The French Laundry or Under Pressure, leaving Ad Hoc at Home on your coffee table does both you and the book a disservice. Ad Hoc at Home looks good enough to be displayed on your coffee table -- but only an incompetent cook actually leaves it there. Ad Hoc at Home belongs in your kitchen and it is intended to be used. If you leave it on your coffee table, it says a lot more about your wanting skills in the kitchen than it does about your superior tastes in cookbooks.