5.0 out of 5 stars
Of all of Thomas Keller's cookbooks, this is the one to buy first.
Reviewed in Canada on 16 July 2015
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.
10 people found this helpful
