The Essential Thomas Keller: The French Laundry Cookbook & Ad Hoc at Home [Box Set] [Hardcover]

by Thomas Keller

Two award-winning books in one box offer a lifetime of learning for anyone who loves fine food.

 From two acclaimed restaurants came two of the most acclaimed, award-winning cookbooks ever published―now packaged together in a luxurious slipcased boxed set, the ideal holiday gift for any food lover. 

First there was French Laundry in Napa Valley, setting a new standard for American fine dining. Then there was The French Laundry Cookbook , setting a new standard for American cookbooks. In 2006, Chef Keller opened Ad Hoc, his casual family-style restaurant that serves a single menu a day, and that restaurant, too, gave birth to a groundbreaking cookbook, in fact a New York Times best seller.

Whereas Ad Hoc at Home offers a huge happiness-inducing collection of family-style recipes that includes lunch-counter favorites―lemon meringue and cherry pie; such classics as Buttermilk Fried Chicken and Herbed Rack of Lamb, plus Thomas’s mom’s coconut cake and his dad’s favorite meatballs― The French Laundry Cookbook is a culinary ode to finesse. Every recipe in it has become a from Keller’s Salmon Cornets to his Oysters and Pearls and Butter-Poached Lobster. From the casual but carefully considered food of Ad Hoc at Home to The French Laundry Cookbook’s recipes at their most refined, this is cooking that delivers in taste, and makes us all better cooks.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Canon

704 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2010

About the author

Thomas Keller is an American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook writer. He and his landmark Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry in Yountville, California, have won multiple awards from the James Beard Foundation, notably the Best California Chef in 1996, and the Best Chef in America in 1997. The restaurant is a perennial winner in the annual Restaurant Magazine list of the Top 50 Restaurants of the World.
In 2005, he was awarded the three star rating in the inaugural Michelin Guide for New York for his restaurant Per Se, and in 2006, he was awarded three stars in the inaugural Michelin Guide to the Bay Area for The French Laundry. He is the only American chef to have been awarded simultaneous three star Michelin ratings for two different restaurants.

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have drooled over Thomas Keller's cookbooks for, I don't know, forever. All the food looks and sounds amazing. While I may never make it to French Laundry in Napa, I can have a little bit of French Laundry come to me. I love how Keller emphasizes the enjoyment of the creation of the dish, not the execution (obviously execution counts) because if you didn't enjoy the creation of the dish then it doesn't matter if it's made perfectly. It doesn't have a soul. He also encourages taking the dishes apart; most people won't use pigs' heads, but the sauce made to go with the pigs' heads would be excellent with chops or roast. This is very heartening for someone who a) has never eaten half the ingredients in these books and wouldn't know where to start and b) has awful cooking techniques and frequently boils pots and pans dry due to absent-mindedness.

And the desserts are to die for. Yum, yum, yum.