Cook Book Review: Ad Hoc at home, Thomas Keller

This book Ad Hoc at home by Thomas Keller was I have to say one of my more surprising purchases. The hefty price was really very discouraging to me but for some reason or another I finally felt that I "needed" it. My first impression to be quite honest was "oh crap not again", you see... Over the years I have purchased what I'd consider a ridiculous amount of cook books, and among them I've found that the flashy ones are really not meant to assist the reader with recipes, its meant to be a coffee table book that people shuffle through to look at the pictures.  In general I've been pretty unhappy with the majority of cooking books I've purchased and I often feel gypped. These "showy" chef cook books in particular I find get cook book deals just because they are well known,  and the recipes within are the same thing I've seen 100 times, or worse yet the food is just far less than desirable. Often recipes are too basic or one of my greatest peeves is "recipes" that contain box mixes or excessive amounts of preservative packed mystery ingredients. I believe it was an Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations episode where I saw Thomas Keller talking about how to perfectly truss and roast a chicken and although it seemed like a no brainer, I was kind of taken back. I'd seen him on Top Chef, and Martha Stewart and then of course I've heard of The French Laundry and all the rage around it, but I never really imagined him as a chef that makes every day food. I mean real food thats attainable to normal people, things I would eat at home on an average week night. Quite frankly I always get the impression that most television chefs offer California-ized dining, meaning the food is very pretty and meticulously placed but not overly flavorful or interesting, or more likely I feel that many restaurants become famous because "so and so" showed up drunk and half naked, ate at this restaurant so now the restaurants extremely popular and have lines around the block. Theres obviously a vast amount of exceptions for me, usually the ones that strike my fancy are places that offer hard core pork or of course seafood and sushi. Michael Symon's Lola, Daniel Boloud's DBGB and then of course Morimoto, these are places that seriously give me foodie fantasies, and I'd love to visit them all ASAP (and often). 

The first few pages of Ad Hock really did not impress me, quite honestly they pissed me off. It was solely the introduction really, how he shared one last meal with his father and then there was the recipe for this meal. Although I understand the sentiment and it struck at my heart strings it was that recipe "dinner for dad" that made me think aw, crap!. The meal was "barbecued chicken with mashed potatoes and collard greens followed by strawberry shortcake". The ingredients were listed exactly as follows: bacon, butter, kosher salt, Yukon gold potatoes, strawberries, sugar, grand marnier, one chicken etc. Not only were the ingredients for an entire composed meal summed up into one list but it called for "barbecue sauce" and "short cake rounds". It was at this moment I just about launched this book out my window, but then I continued. The fried chicken recipe was good but nothing out of the ordinary, it at least reassured me that the ingredients list would not give me a migraine and I appreciated that this book approached brining. The roasted chicken, although simple the pictures on how to truss a chicken were very well laid out, not to mention it WAS his roasted chicken that captured my attention in the first place. Then there was the pomegranate-glazed quail, I about slobbered all over the book, pomegranate and molasses on quail just had me in a day dream. From this point it was somewhat hit or miss but it was not because the recipes were bad, some were just not very interesting to me, I mean roasted leg of lamb is not something I'd consider ingenious or new and his "lobster roll" recipe kind of irritated me, I just chalked it up to the fact that its not a new england recipe. I don't expect every book I buy to have 100% new recipes however it is somewhat if a setback for me when I see way too many of the same old. Other things that caught my eye were the beef stroganoff (with braised beef short ribs), meatballs with pappardelle (home made pappardelle pasta!), braised oxtail and mushroom tartine, soft shell crabs with sweet and sour cherry gastrique, and even simple things like crab cakes or chicken soup with dumplings his recipes sound very good. For me the chapter that seemed to really reel me in was the "lifesaver" section of the book it contained chutneys, compotes, jams and jellies (examples: fig and balsamic jam, red pepper jelly), as well as pickling and preserving it was very impressive with garlic confit to preserved lemons. 

Overall the book was fairly large and pretty well rounded, my first impression was that I'd gotten suckered into just another coffee table book, but its a really large inclusive book, the dessert section covers ice creams, cup cakes, brownies and pie. The salad section is somewhat mundane but the dressings are home made and sound like they'd really be pretty delicious. Over all flipping around this book really does inspire ideas and meals for me, which I find is a top attribute to any cook book. The pictures are great, the layout is unique and its really got a humor about it that I really appreciate. The wittiness really makes the author seem a bit more more humble, it reassured me that although the author has a pretentious reputation he followed through with a  really good book that was laid out well and had a great variety of content.  Ad Hoc at home is really in a category of cook books that are great to just look at, not necessarily a coffee table book, but its truly a picturesque book with great recipes and an extensive source of reference for a variety of things from properly cooking meat, pickling or even baking cookies. I would recommend this to anyone who loves to cook from scratch and wants a slightly new interpretation of home cooking. Its not stuck up food, but yet its got a gourmet flair to it that any food purist would appreciate. I've found that its truly a great addition to my cook book collection.