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.

Although I've only had Thomas Keller's ad hoc for a short time, I ready love it and have found many things that make it a must-buy if you're a lover of food or books about food. Keller's quote on the back of the book really sums up the theme of this book: "...a big collection of family meals and everyday staples, delicious approachable food, recipes that are doable at home. No immersion circulator required. No complicated garnishes. I promise!" Keller delivers on this promise in ad hoc. The book assumes far less prerequisite knowledge than his other books, The French Laundry, Bouchon, and Under Pressure. In fact, the first section of the book is called "Becoming a better chef," and Keller outlines the techniques, ingredients, and tools that can help anyone become a better home cook. I own all 3 of Keller's other books, and regularly cook from them. This is, by far, the most accessible book for the casual home cook. The recipes in here can easily be made as weeknight meals--most don't require any excessive time demands or preparation. Many of the recipes are dishes you're probably familiar with: chicken pot pie, fried chicken, braised short ribs, beef stroganoff, apple fritters, chocolate brownies, etc. But, this being a Thomas Keller book, many of these classic dishes are refined and made more elegant. For example, his beef stroganoff uses fresh cremini mushrooms, creme fraiche, braised short ribs, and pappardelle pasta. All of the recipes I've made have turned out perfectly so far, which has been the case with his previous books. Consistent with his previous books, the look of ad hoc is beautiful. It's also a nice change to see Keller's fun side featured, and he's displayed in a number of whimsical photographs throughout the book, warning you: "shh... the lamb is resting," and telling you, "That's how I roll," when showing off his lobster roll. In addition to these photos of Keller, there are numerous beauty shots of the food and technique photos. Overall, I think this book strikes a perfect balance between elegance and approachability. The recipes are refined enough that the most experienced food lover will be satisfied, but simple enough to prepare that the willing novice can easily tackle them. For those who have looked at The French Laundry or Under Pressure and were scared off by rare ingredients, expensive equipment, or advanced technique, this book is a great initiation into the world of Thomas Keller's food.

I think a lot of people don't know what they're getting into when they buy this book. The first recipe in the book is "dinner for dad"- barbecued chicken with mashed potatoes and collar greens, followed by strawberry shortcake. According to a lot of reviewers the recipes in the book are "daunting" and only meant for feasts... well yeah, if you'd read the jacket of the book, that's precisely what the author is describing. The intro says, "food meant to be served from big bowls and platters passed hand to hand at the table". Between the pages however, you'll see those people are missing the entire point of the book. Thomas Keller is among the greatest American chefs, in the pantheon alongside names like James Beard or Julia Child. Keller also has a bone to pick with the idea that cooking has to be "fancy" or that it's out of reach for the average person. "Ad Hoc At Home" is therefore designed to help any layperson to cook a delicious meal that's worth bringing the family together. Not only will you learn some personal skills for your own health and wellbeing, but you'll also connect with your loved ones by sharing the results. It's a wonderful sentiment, meant to fight the "celebrity chef" image of cooking that's pervasive in America. Are the dishes daunting? You betcha, but no moreso than the namesake at the start of this review. Cooking a whole chicken well (and not turning it into the dry mess most people do), serving it with sides and dessert, that's not for the faint of heart nor is it for one person living alone in an apartment. You're going to have to roll up your sleeves and call over some friends. But again, that's the idea. And then again, that's still missing the point. In between the pages, Keller tells you every single thing a beginning cook needs to know to make these dishes easy. When Keller talks about salting a dish, he refers to a "two finger pinch" or a "three finger pinch", which he explains in detail is a skill you should develop to be able to reach into a bag of salt and grab the amount by feeling rather than using a measuring spoon. Once you have that feel, you can better manage your kitchen- you won't accidentally let something burn in the pan while reaching for a spoon to measure salt, you'll just pinch the salt you need and move on. There's a method to everything. Step-by-step, Keller shows you how to really cook, how to build the muscle memory and habits that move you from merely following recipes and toward intuitive cooking. If you read this book well and if you're prepared to practice, most of the dishes in this book should become common sense to you. You won't need a recipe to braise a piece of meat- that should be a skill that comes as naturally to you as brushing your teeth. Keller will show you how. Dishes that look daunting should become less so- sure a whole rack of ribs takes some effort to get right, but a good cook doesn't need to read a single line of a recipe to prepare delicious ribs. Keller teaches you the secrets of making the whole process intuitive. You need a little mustard to add some vinegar to the sauce, some brown sugar for the molasses and sweet, maybe you like some clove and some pepper, and on and on. All the secrets are in this book. And once you've read "Ad Hoc At Home", you'll benefit from it even if you don't make a single dish from the book. Knowing how to portion ingredients by muscle memory, how to judge flavors and smells and doneness without consulting measures and charts, these skills apply to cooking universally.

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.

Of course anything Thomas Keller isn't going to be simple, but even this simplified (for him) cook book is very advanced. These recipes require that you are already have mastered all the basic cooking techniques plus have developed a decent palette. The book itself hits on peeve of mine by being literally 5 times larger than it needs to be. It's very uncomfortable to hold and read with miles of blank space inside, although it does display nicely on a shelf. The recipes themselves are very time consuming and over complicated in my opinion, but that is how Thomas Keller cooks. Many of the recipes take all day to prepare and a few take multiple days. Pretty much all of the recipes require you to dirty just about every pot, pan, mixing bowl, and gadget in your kitchen. That being said these are master recipes from a true master chef. The short ribs, fried chicken, and fresh pasta recipes are worth the $50.00 cover price and there are many other great ones including basic staples like stocks, brines, and some great fresh dressings. Do you really need to make an origami lid out of parchment paper when simply leaving the lid slightly ajar serves the same purpose? No you don't, but an experienced cook can easily dumb these recipes down a little to make them fit into a home kitchen that doesn't come complete with an army of prep cooks and dishwashers.

Fantastic cookbook. NOT one of those "super chef-y" vanity cookbooks by a famous chef. The recipes are all achievable by mere mortals. The writing is engaging, every page contains at least one revelation (even to those of us who have been cooking daily for decades), and Thomas Keller's personality comes through (without dominating). For those who don't know, Ad Hoc is Keller's family-style (and unpretentious) restaurant in Yountville (Napa Valley, CA). A great experience — and most of the restaurant's dishes can (and should!) be made using this cookbook. I didn't think that at my (cough cough) advanced age I could still be learning new things about cooking (except of the "super chef-y" variety), but AD HOC AT HOME has proved me wrong.

This is a magnificent cookbook in which Chef Keller has adapted the recipes and techniques used in his restaurants (not just Ad Hoc) for the home cook, with very approachable techniques and ingredients. Moreover, it's beautifully edited, with 100% cross-clickability: TOC, index, embedded recipes, even embedded ingredients, techniques, and equipment! He offers chapters on tips, techniques, ingredients, equipment, and even his Sources are clickable to the purveyors' websites. For example, we can click on Pekin duck, grits, Moretti polenta, rendered duck fat, cocoa powder, Applewood-smoked bacon, and more, if we can't find it locally. He warns us that we'll probably have to pre-order pork belly if buying from a supermarket. As a California chef, we expect and he provides many recipes using fresh seafood. Live soft-shell crabs may not be a possibility for many of us, but that's an exception. He probably has no idea that most of us, if inclined to make his Roasted Beet and Potato Salad, will be unable to acquire 3 kinds of beets (golden, red, & Chioggia) plus 3 kinds of potatoes (marble, purple, & red bliss), even at our Farmers' Market, but he's a Californian and is probably accustomed to seeing 12 varieties of potatoes at his FM's. Not to mention fresh chanterelles and morels in season. I'm a thousand or two miles away in the middle of nowhere and without such bounty at my FM's, but this doesn't bother me at all. If you're a meat-lover, I think you'll find his meat chapter invaluable: there's a reason for the ad hoc cover illustration! I also loved his "lifesavers:" condiments and preserves prepared ahead in his kitchens--for example, confit'd garlic, butters, spice powders, stocks, and more. Every recipe has a headnote telling us what's special about this recipe. There are many color photos in the book, but most are of technique rather than finished dishes. For example, 13 large photos show us to cut up a chicken, plus another 4 for trussing. 8 to show us how to tie a boneless roast. He gives tutorials large and small throughout the book: how to use a propane torch to caramelize meat, the importance of resting meat, how to make and use a parchment lid. This tells me how much he wants us to learn, and I love that. However, I know that many readers want to see color photos of every finished dish. For me, the book deserves 6 stars for comprehensiveness and clickable formatting: congratulations to the authors and editors for setting the gold standard in Kindle cookbook formatting.

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.