Ad Hoc at Home
by Thomas Keller
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Book Reviews of Ad Hoc at Home
Book Review: One of the best!
Summary: 5 Stars
Ad Hoc is easily one of the best cookbooks I have read. It does what so many other books have tried to do before it, but much better. What am I referring to? Well, it makes cooking fun! The recipes it provides are absolutely delicious AND easy. It is one of the first cookbooks I have found that takes the type of cooking you would find in a 3 Michelin star restaurant, applies it to the type of food you might have eaten in your childhood, and makes it easy for anyone to make.
Thomas Keller explains in the book that his idea for the restaurant started out as wanting just a temporary restaurant that would focus on a sort of "homecooking" like they usually served for their staff meals. His restaurant turned out to be an overwhelming success, and so it became a permanent fixture in his line of restaurants. Little did I know that it's also the type of cookbook I wanted. It helps you to become a better cook and teaches you about the meals you actually feel like cooking every day.
I own several other excellent cookbooks, and most are either beautiful to look at, but extremely difficult for the amateur chef to replicate (The French Laundry cookbook, Alinea), or are easy to replicate, but not overly exciting to the point where you actually want to make the food. This one actually accomplishes both.
In addition to the recipes you find in the book, it also discusses good equipment to have, techniques that might be beneficial, places to buy quality ingeredients, great pictures, and further recipes for staple sauces and condiments.
The book is extremely thorough, well laid-out, and keeps your interest even if you want to read through it instead of just taking advantage of the recipes. The one negative aspect of the book in my mind is that the pictures, although beautiful and plentiful, don't show everything you might want to see. I love seeing the finished products before diving into a new recipe. The provided pictures in this book cover maybe cover 1/3 of the recipes. The book is already long and I can see why they would exclude many of the pictures, but on the other hand, there are several pictures that seem to have no point at all. These could have easily been replaced with more useful pictures of the food.
Overall though, this is without a doubt a must-have. Whether you want something just to read through and admire, or something to guide you and help you create some excellent meals, Ad hoc will satisfy.
Book Review: Keller and Mozart
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm an avid cook and to me the best book for the home chef is Ad Hoc at Home. In my estimation Thomas Keller is a modern day incarnation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. High praise? Yes. Be forewarned this will be a glowing review. What I'm trying to get across with this comparison is Keller's recipes are like great music, if you listen to his song, taste the dishes, then they will stay with you. Their greatness is your happiness. He takes simple, everyday ingrediants and trancends them with dishes that are better than you could expect them to be. I have made many, if not most of the recipes in Ad Hoc and there were many times along the way that I found a new "favorite" dish. The dishes are relatively simple but they do require patience. It is still Keller after all which means you will be skimming, straining and putting in effort to get clear flavors. The recipes are not as lofty or strenuous as many of those found in Kellers other flagship book, The French Laundry, but can still be time consuming. An example of this is the pan roasted chicken with sweet sausage and peppers, a favorite of mine. At its base brining, browning and roasting the chicken will take time. A component however is peperonata rustica (the peppers of the dish) which will take a good deal of time to make. A component of that peperonata is a soffrito which will take about 5 hours of stewing onions and tomatoes to complete. Now all of this is very easy to do but it does take time. Believe me when I tell you that it is worth it. There is a great deal of recipes that cover American comfort favorites like fried chicken to fare growing in populaity such as pork belly. Simple, quick recipes like the caramelized sea scallops to the slightly more involved such as the chicken mar i muntanya.
Amid these recipes are pointers on technique and personal stories from Keller. These can be very helpful to those without professional training or experience. They also give the book a more personal feel. Along with this I have to say the book looks fantastic. The photographs of the food are outstanding and give added enthusiasm to try the various dishes. While it may look great on the coffee table its true place is the kitchen where it has taken the mantle in mine as the go to source.
Book Review: My only regret is not buying this book sooner!
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw this book at Williams-Sonoma a few times, and it always looked really interesting. I finally took the plunge and purchased it, and I really wish I had purchased it months ago when I first saw it. This book is really an exceptional cookbook because:
- The recipes are varied, using different cuts of different types of meats, and offer something new for everybody. I cannot tell you how many times I have purchased a cookbook only to find that half the recipes in it are chicken and the other half are for chuck. Keller presents recipes using many, many different cuts and types of meats.
- These recipes are also very versatile. He says himself throughout the book that most of these recipes can substitute in seasonal ingredients or different flavors. Many of the recipes are just "base" recipes- I believe he even says himself at one point in the cakes section that once you learn how to make one of his cakes, you can basically make them all because they are really quite similar.
- Details, details, details! One of the things that we often miss in cookbooks is the "tacit knowledge"- things that pros have picked up on after baking a cake one hundred times or making a steak over and over again for years, but don't think to tell other people or don't know how to explain. You really get the idea that Keller is aware of nearly every action he makes, and his recipes are as detailed as possible. I have never seen a cookbook so insistent on brining and learning to measure with your hands rather than spoons.
- Keller's pragmatic approach to cooking as a whole, rather than a recipe-by-recipe basis. There are quite a few sections in the book about cooking in general, and they are very, very useful. He explains, for instance, some useful tools that he likes, some ways of learning how to tell if meat is raw or cooked, why duck breast is cooked at a low temperature versus fish at a hot temperature, his favorite oils and why...there is SO MUCH information in this book about just general cooking.
Pick this book up asap! You will not be sorry.
Book Review: Masterwork Cuisine Without the Ego
Summary: 5 Stars
When I first spent a couple of hours flipping through Ad Hoc at Home, I eventually closed it, looked down at the cover, and thought "this book is going to make me up my game". It's the same feeling as I had the first time I opened a calculus book.
This is not really for the beginner. The recipes are often deceptively simple, and require strong fundamental kitchen skills to execute. Without foundational skills, a lot of this book is likely to be pretty frustrating for the young cook. There is a section at the beginning entitled "Becoming a Better Cook", but in my opinion it could just as easily have been titled, simply, "Prerequisites".
As I read Ad Hoc, I kept feeling like Keller was talking to me as a fellow professional. There was a sense of warmth to the writing, and a mentoring attitude. Having a background in working kitchens, some of what he had to say was familiar; a lot of it was new, or was an extension of things I've heard, seen, or done before.
Not every recipe is what I'd prefer personally; for example, to me, fried chicken is something that is made in a cast iron skillet, with salt, pepper and flour, and is shallow- rather than deep-fried. What I can say, though, is that I have yet to see anything in this book that isn't well-reasoned. One thing I love about it is the total lack of pretense; Keller is just telling us how he thinks things are best done, or how he likes to do them. The emphasis is on perfection of rustic, home-style cuisine. This is food I can serve to my blue collar family without quizzical looks, and enjoy the quiet table sounds that come from a well-appreciated meal.
In the end, this is a book for the intermediate or advanced cook looking for the details that take a chef from journeyman to master. If it were a textbook, it would be for graduate students. It's the collated professional experience and honed recipes of one of America's preeminent chefs.
Book Review: Exceptional Cookbook for Home Cook
Summary: 5 Stars
To my tastes, what makes a great cookbook? First, that it meets the needs of the target user; Second, that it inspires the user to greater competency and enjoyment of preparing its dishes; third, that the style aids in number one and two.
Keller certainly meets these conditions, if by #1 one realizes his target in this one has shifted as the other reviews have noted by noticeably addressing "food I love to sit down to with my family and friends" recipes, says the author. By starting what Keller thought was to be a short-term venture that would present the staff dinner approach at this restaurants, it took off to become a fixture. This fixture inspired this cookbook offering and one its specific goals is to make us better cooks. Keller writes five large pages on it. They are excellent, although many of us have learned these valuable and pertinent topics from other chefs and their TV shows and cookbooks, but his writing is superb and right on. The style is large and lays flat and of course, from the paper stock to the prose to the color photography, it is inspirational in drawing the chef at home to try its cuisine for oneself. Am especially into the well-done help additions, e.g. Parchment lid construction.
I look forward to cooking many of this collection. Made one whole offering which started with a delightful Lentil and Sweet Potato Soup, followed by Tomato and Handmade Mozzarela Salad, Main Course was Pan Roasted Duck Breast which served on Butter-Braised Radishes, Kohlrabi and Brussel Sprouts; ended with Blackberry Cobbler (substituted these for called for Blueberries.)
This is wonderful home chef resource, while not advancing the exoticness of his previous offerings, is totally geared more to our usefulness when we don't want to tackle the complicated ingredient-technique recipes.
Will be a classic!