Bouchon: Cauliflower Au Gratin

To go along with the simple roast chicken I decided to make Thomas Keller's Cauliflower Au Gratin from his Bouchon cookbook. The recipe calls for one head of cauliflower, but in retrospect two would probably be better. Once I cleaned the leaves off the head, I removed the florets and saved the stem.

First you caramelize minced onions:

After trimming the hard exterior of the stem, the recipe calls to put the soft interior in a food processor to mince and then add to the pot:

After adding some spices (including some spicy curry), heavy cream and while milk is added then reduced:

After the sauce has reduced, the florets are laid out in a pan and the sauce is spread over the florets. Before adding into the oven breadcrumbs are added to the top:

Here is the final product:

The Verdict

A very good side dish. Too often side dishes are made that could just as easily be a meal in itself. This dish is perfect as a side to a light protien, like the simple roast chicken.

Bouchon: Simple Roast Chicken

A couple of weeks ago I received Thomas Keller's Bouchon cookbook. One of the first recipes that stood out to me was Keller's "Simple Roast Chicken," mostly because it was so simple. Keller calls for a "fresh farm raised chicken" so I made a trip to The Butcher & Larder (2323 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL) to pick up a 3 pound chicken: 

After we trussed the bird, Keller calls for only salt and pepper for the bird, no butter as is traditionally used, as he claims that butter creates steam and that he wants a dry heat to cook the bird. So we didn't use any butter. Here's the bird before we put it in the oven:

And after only an hour of cooking at a high heat with no basting:

Before serving Keller recommends some thyme, and to "serve simply":

The Verdict:

A very tasty and moist chicken. The flavors are very simple, but with a high quality fresh bird I'm not sure you need a whole lot more than salt, pepper and thyme. We were surprised just how moist the meat was, despite not using any butter in the cooking process. I have to imagine that this is a very healthy dish. After we had our fill, I stripped all the meat I could find off the bird and saved it for later, when I made some great chicken salad by adding a little mayo and celery.

Ad Hoc at Home: Vanilla Ice Cream

As I've been using Ad Hoc at Home as a springboard into the world of ice cream making, instead of skipping ahead to slightly more complicated recipes I decided to make what Keller calls the "base" for many of his ice creams and other desserts. Here are the ingredients needed for the basic vanilla ice cream (note the real vanilla beans):

After heating up the cream, milk, sugar, and eggs the main step in the recipe is removing the beans from the vanilla stalks and placing it in the mixture (along with the stalks as well) and allowing to sit at room temperature for a while to allow the mixture to absorb the vanilla flavor. Here is the mixture pre-trip to the fridge:

After letting the mixture sit in the fridge overnight, I mixed it in my Kitchen Aid ice cream maker/attachment and placed in the freezer to let sit and firm up. Here is the finished product:

The Verdict:

This was a very good ice cream. Like Ad Hoc's  other desserts, it is very rich and should be limited to 3 or 4 bites. The ice cream tasted the best for two days after I made it, after that it started to loose its texture and became a bit icy.

Thanks T.K.!

When reading Ad Hoc at Home, Thomas Keller tells you not to use tongs recently made popular by the Food Network TV chef corps hawking them at Target. TK claims that they squeeze and damage the food and in one article even tells the author to flip scallops with your hand. Anyway, I've been trying to hold back on using tongs as much as I can. What do I get for my loyalty to Keller's school of thought?:

A gigantic burn welt on my hand! I was frying the beef for last week's beef stroganoff when the hot oil popped and nailed my hand. At first it didn't hurt really at all. But over two days the skin burnt off and formed a literal hole in my hand. It was so bad someone at the office blurted out "Oh my God! What happened?" I walked over to the office first aid kit and threw a large bandage on it.

Thanks T.K.! 

Ad Hoc at Home: Caramel Ice Cream

To go along with the beef stroganoff we made this past weekend, we also thought it would be fun to make one of the ice cream recipes from Ad Hoc at Home for dessert. We decided on the Caramel Ice Cream recipe because it sounded interesting and actually pretty simple.

Here are the ingredients, a pretty basic ice cream collection of egg yolks, milk and cream, sugar, and salt:

First off, you make the caramel by putting the sugar in a pot with some water and bringing to a simmer. It doesn't look like much now:

But after a while it starts to look familiar!:

After adding and mixing in the cream and milk, you strain and place the mixture in an ice bath:

After cooling in the fridge for some time. We ran our ice cream through our Kitchen Aid mixer attachment, then we put it in the freezer to firm up before serving. When we tasted it we were shocked how rich it was, and decided to balance it with something else...in this case a brownie. Here's the finished product:

Verdict

Very tasty but also very rich. Anymore than a scoop and the flavor becomes a bit too much in my opinion. It did taste great with the brownie (just a mix, not the Ad Hoc recipe) though. We also thought this would go great with apple pie instead of the traditional vanilla.

Ad Hoc at Home: Beef Stroganoff (includes Braised Short Ribs)

This past weekend our trip to the Twin Cities was cut short after we decided to skip town early before blizzard hit the area on Sunday. We got home on Saturday night and with no plans at all for Sunday I popped open Ad Hoc at Home to look for ideas for the next night's dinner when I came across a recipe for Beef Stroganoff, which my wife and I have made many times prior in the "classic" Cambell's Cream of Mushroom soup style. I started reading the full recipe and taking notes on things I would need at the store. As I was reading I said a couple of times "this seems too easy" and sure enough....sub-recipe!!

Keller's recipe calls for the braised short rib recipe from the previous two pages. I have never braised anything, but Keller notes that "it's a very rewarding process for the chef." I've learned quickly that when TK says rewarding he means "this is going to take a long time...I hope you have comfortable shoes."

After getting back from an early dawn trip to Whole Foods in Lincoln Park where I've never bought more produce in one trip to the store in my entire life, I started on the recipe. The first part of creating the braise is making a red wine reduction, which when done resembles a glaze. This required a whole lot of chopping of carrots, leeks, shallots, thyme, button mushrooms, and onions. You then let it simmer and shake for about 45-50 min before adding the beef and starting the braise.

After the reduction becomes a glaze, Keller tells you to add even more carrots, leeks, onions, and shallots, and to start on the meat. The recipe calls for short ribs, with the bone cut out. The "butcher" at Whole Foods who clearly didn't feel like deboning short ribs at 8am on a Sunday sold me on buying short rib chuck cut in the shape of short ribs. I was tired as well and agreed and took a shortcut which in the end was probably stupid. He claimed for that cut he would charge $3 more a pound, but when I thought about it later that probably isn't too mad of a deal considering otherwise you're paying for the bone weight that you don't eat. If the Butcher & Larder opened before 10:00am or I had more than a day's notice I would of gone there.

Anyway...I digress.

You then dredge the salt and pepper seasoned meat through flour before browing it in a frying pan:

Browning the meat in some very hot canola oil:

After you brown the meat, you wrap it in cheesecloth, add in the newly chopped veggies, and cover with beef broth and let it cook in the oven low and slow for about 2 hours. After it's done, you remove the meat, strain the contents of the pot to separate the braising liquid, and place the meat back in the liquid to cool and soak up the liquid for flavor and tenderness. Before serving the dish, you cut the meat into small bite sized pieces and reheat it by carmalizing it in a pan and placing it in the oven for a short period of time.

TK makes an interesting comment in the beginning of the recipe and states that this beef stroganoff is just as much about the mushrooms as it is the beef, and he's right there are a ton (actually 2 pounds) of Crimini mushrooms in this! In order to make the sauce, you place 1 pound of the mushrooms in a food processor and something that looks like this:

After adding about 3 cups of heavy cream and mixing in the above mixture you get this:

As for the remaining pound of mushrooms, the recipe calls for them to be sauteed and placed on top of the dish. Pre-saute:

Post Saute:

Like much of the other recipes in Ad Hoc, this beef stroganoff is really a sum of parts. When plating, you assemble the beef, pappardelle egg noodles (Keller tell you to make from scratch in a sub recipe, but I had no time for that), mushrooms, and parsley for some color.

Verdict

This is one good Stroganoff and Keller was right, it's all about the mushrooms here. While the beef had a good amount of flavor, the egg noodles covered in the cream and mushrooms were my favorite part. Our friends, Joanie and Ryan, who (unknown to me) hate mushrooms came over for dinner and both of them cleaned their plates and loved it. While very time consuming to make, this was a winner in my book.

Culinary Christmas in February!

I came home from work just now to find a box from Santa Amazon filled with a couple presents:

After cooking a few items from Ad Hoc at Home and even visiting the namesake restaurant...I had to have more TK! So I went online last week and ordered his first two books; The French Laundry and Bouchon. 

Needless to say I'm pumped to read through these. But I've promised myself that I'm going to cook my way through most of Ad Hoc at Home before moving onto Bouchon and then eventually to The French Laundry. 

Culinary Road Trip: Napa Valley

 This past Saturday, my wife and I made a day trip up from San Francisco to the Napa Valley.

Bouchon Bakery

6528 Washington Street

Yountville, CA 94599

(707) 944-2253

First off in our tour of the area was a stop at Bouchon Bakery, which is the town bakery owned by Thomas Keller. It's literally a small structure sitting next to Bouchon, his French Bistro inspired restaurant. Inside there is a small display and ordering spot with a large bakery in the back. Even at an odd hour in the morning, there was a sizable line snaking out the door with people stopping in for breakfast or even a snack while in town for vacation or a wine tasting. Once inside, we were like kids in a candy store and ordered way too much! We tried the bacon and cheese scones, a croissant, two macaroons, a cookie, and a cinnamon caramel sweetbread. All were good, but the standouts to me was the bacon and cheese scone which was out of this world (and carried a sizable amount of bacon grease in the mixture), and the macaroons which were chilled to perfection and had a soft cream filling...more like a macaroon sandwich. We tried a little bit of everything and saved the rest to snack on for the rest of the day and weekend. I also tried the Hot Chocolate, which tasted like a warm liquid version of the chocolate ice cream I made the previous weekend from the Ad Hoc cookbook! We sat outside in the warm sun and enjoyed our treats. Here's a picture of the storefront while waiting in line: 

 Oakville Grocery

7856 St. Helena Highway

Napa, CA 94558

(707) 944-8802

  

Still full from our breakfast snack mission to Bouchon Bakery, we visited the Oakville Grocery for a light lunch and to look around as it came highly recommended to me by someone who has spent alot of time in the area. The Grocery sits on the main road running through the Valley and is obviously a popular place for tourists and the limo and vans filled to the brim with groups of people going wine tasting tours. By lunchtime the tiny store is packed with buzzed 40-something yuppies looking for picnic baskets and munchies. Once we managed to squeeze ourselves to the back of the store to order lunch, we got a BLT with avocado, a crab cake, and some coleslaw to split with an old fashioned glass bottle coke. The food here is very good, but when paying $10 a sandwich and ~$30 for lunch it would be nice to not feel like I was in the middle of a bachelorette party or college reunion! We ate our lunch in the back on some picnic benches before hitting the road to see a few wineries. Here's a shot of the outside of the Grocery: 

 We mostly toured around the Valley all afternoon enjoying the scenery and warmth but we did visit a few different places for tastings. Among my favorites were Silver Oak and Cade Winery. Silver Oak is a pretty popular wine with most men that I know as they produce big bold cedar Cabs that pair well with steaks and other red meat. Silver Oak is pretty prototypical of the many tasting warehouses in the Napa Valley where the limo pulls up, 8 frat buddies pile out in shorts and flip flops, they pound their two tastings, buy a bottle of wine, and get back hopefully into the limo that dropped them off there bounding towards the next stop. The winery is very pretty though, and since it was such a nice day the nice servers were happy to let you roam the grounds with your tasting. The tasting here costs about $25 for two tastings, but in a nice touch they give you a souvenir Silver Oak logo wine glass to take home with you. Here is a shot of the Silver Oak grounds:

In a nice juxtaposition, we also made our way up to Cade Winery based on the recommendation of a co-worker who's significant other is a wine distributor here in Chicago. In order to get to Cade, you leave the valley to climb a surrounding mountain via a small two lane road (thanks GPS!) and you find a small entrance to the winery and tasting room. This is much different that the other wineries that I saw in the Valley, reservation only, the tasting was much more quiet, relaxed, and informative. I really liked their SB (even not being a big white wine guy) and their Estate Cabernet which is very good and closer to a Bordeaux style.

Here's the sign and logo: 

And a shot of the very neat view off the back of the mountain and the surrounding tasting area:

                               

After getting our fill of the tasting and winery circuit, we made our way back to Yountville and decided to go on a long walk in the setting warm sun before tackling dinner later. Yountville is really a pretty nice little town once removed from the touristy areas along the main drag through town. There are small quaint parks, trails through local wineries, and nice vacation homes. We also decided to walk down to the other side of town to check out The French Laundry, and in particular their 3 acre garden that sits next to the restaurant. Their garden is really fantastic, not huge, but large enough to reportedly supply The French Laundry, Bouchon, and Ad Hoc with 30% of their produce. In line with my complete man-crush on Thomas Keller, when walking by The French Laundry I spotted him from across the street standing in the garden talking with some guests, and had to snap a picture in full tourist mode! Here it is (he's the guy in the white chef's jacket, obviously):

Ad Hoc

6476 Washington Street

Yountville, CA 94599

www.adhocrestaurant.com

After successfully creeping out even myself in stalking Thomas Keller, we made our way to dinner at his other restaurant in town, Ad Hoc: 

Ad Hoc was built as a "temporary" pop-up restaurant by Thomas Keller and his restaurant group after he needed to fill some recently purchased space in town. Ad Hoc focused on serving "family style" meals but with the extreme attention to detail that diners have come to expect from Keller. His executive chef here is Dave Cruz who, much like down the street at The French Laundry, creates the menu each day from scratch. Each menu consists of a salad, entree, cheese course, and a dessert. Our menu from last week is as follows: 

Spinach Salad

tfl garden sunchokes,

soft boiled hen egg,
roasted chioggia beets,

pickled asparagus,
shallot vinaigrette

Liberty Farm's Seared Duck Breast

wilted frisee, spring onions,

celery treks , braised radish

red rice, rapini leaves

Seahive

maldon flatbread, rocket arugula
cranberry dressing

Orange Poundcake

buttermilk sorbet

$52

Once we had made reservations at Ad Hoc about 5 weeks prior to our visit, I signed up for their e-mail list that sends out the daily menu the 5 days a week they are open (Thursday through Monday) as well as bought the Ad Hoc at Home cookbook which I've already read through completely and even cooked from in advance of a dinner party we threw (see Chicken Pot Pie and Banana Bread Pudding posts above). Needless to say, I was pumped for dinner and it didn't disappoint.

The spinach salad features sunchokes from the very French Laundry garden we had just walked past and was obviously very fresh and light. The hen egg added a nice layer as did the very good pickled asparagus.

For the main course, they had a seared duck breast (which is actually featured in Ad Hoc at Home). I thought it was very good, but I am a huge fan of duck. It was pretty simple dish, served in an all-clad pan, that really let the super high quality fresh duck breast speak for itself. Since my wife hates all things duck, she asked if they could make her a vegetarian dish instead and they brought out a fillet of sauteed Alaskan halibut which she said was fine. Both dishes were served with a side of red rice. As a special addition to the meal, there was also an option to add a rabbit side dish (it was presented essentially as three sushi-like rolls filled with rabbit meat) which I thought was very tasty.

Perhaps the highlight of the entire meal was the cheese course called "seahive." The waiter said that the cheese was brought in from Washington state and is a favorite of the chef. It was served on a piece of maldon flatbread and with a cranberry dressing on top. It was fantastic!

Dessert was a small individual poundcake served with a side of buttermilk orange sorbet. Each on their own was good, but eaten together it was heavenly and a perfect way to round out the meal.

Overall I thought Ad Hoc was great and even more so after reading their cookbook and having an appreciation for the concept and food before eating there. In my opinion the weakest part of the meal might of been the main course, but even that was way above average! The service was fantastic, from the bar staff (inexpensive wines and bottled beer) to our waitress who very nicely gave me a copy of the menu (including the Ad Hoc folder!) to take home with me.

After dinner we hoped back into the rental car and made our late night hour-long drive back to the city. While we were crazy about the food and wine in the Napa area, we were both not so sure we'd rush back on a weekend or a day trip. The area really is a culinary destination and deserves a long weekend on it's own. I did decided however, I won't be back in Napa without a reservation and visit to The French Laundry!

Culinary Road Trip: San Francisco

This past week my wife and I took a long weekend vacation to San Francisco and the Napa Valley. I came away from the trip thinking that this area might be the best place to eat and drink in the entire country!

Fresh from getting off the plane, we jumped on the BART system and made our way to the 16th and Mission stop around noon in anticipation of a 1pm tour of Anchor Steam Brewing Company, located about a mile away according to Google Maps. Since when we got of the train we found ourselves in a very Hispanic neighborhood, we thought Mexican food would make the most sense and we took off in search of an authentic taqueria.

Dos Pinas

251 Rhode Island St. #102

San Francisco, CA 04103

(415) 252-8220

We found a local place, Dos Pinas that was busting at the seems with customers at noon, across the street from a culinary academy. We gave it a shot and we're glad we did. Dos Pinas is a small, maybe 30 seat place with order and pickup windows. My wife had the California Tacos, with chicken breast, lettuce, pico de gallo, fresh guac, sour cream, red rice, and beans which were very good and according to her "better than Big Star!" I had the carnitas "Street Tacos" which were little corn tortillas, cebollas y cilantro, and salsa verde these were also very tasty. I'd recommend giving them a try if you're in the area or are killing time before a brewery tour.

Anchor Steam Brewery

1705 Mariposa Street

San Francisco, CA 94107

(415) 863-8350

We then made the short walk over to the Anchor Steam brewery:

                          

I had to call 6 weeks in advance in order to get a reservation to a brewery tour. Tours are limited to about 20 people, once or sometimes twice a day, only on the weekdays. You meet in their own private pub, lined with cool beer memorabilia, Anchor Steam or otherwise (they had a large Old Style and Schlitz collection, seriously). Our tour guide did a great job, telling the story of a 100+ year old brewery that was ready to close in the 1960s when a local wealthy Stanford graduate who loved the beer and didn't want it to go away named Fritz Maytag bought the company and ran it until last year when he sold it to an investment group. He ran it as a labor of love and it shows to this day. After a half hour tour through the facility, which produces 90,000 barrels of beer a year, our guide let everyone taste the Company's 6 draft beers for the next hour plus. The tour is free, but reservations are tough!

You can read more about the Company here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_Brewing_Company

Here is a picture of their very neat copper brewing kettles: 

And a picture of their neat tap room filled with leather chairs, a wood bar, big windows, and a bunch of cool beer memorabilia:

Flour + Water

2401 Harrison Street

San Francisco, CA 94110

(415) 826-7000

Our first night in San Francisco we went to dinner at Flour + Water. I first saw Flour + Water in GQ, who named it the 2nd best new restaurant in the country in a recent issue. The menu here is Italian and focuses on seasonal ingredients, including featuring an in-house butcher. Small and with a neighborhood feel, F+W is a fun and relaxing place to eat.

According to the restaurant, they have a pizza oven capable of getting up to 800* and are known for their pies. So we ordered one as an appetizer which was recommended. The pizza was light, almost pesto-style, and very tasty. For my main course I had a wonderful veal liver ravioli that was incredibly fresh and cooked perfectly. My wife had a beef tongue bolenesi that was good as well. A national top-10 restaurant experience? Not sure about that, but it was very solid none the less!

 Humphry Slocombe

2790 Harrison Street

San Francisco, CA 94110

(415) 550-6971

After dinner we made the very short walk down to Humphry Slocombe for a scoop or two of artisan ice cream. They feature some wild and very unique flavors here, including Foie Gras and Government Cheese. I ended up with the Secret Breakfast which was a vanilla ice cream with bourbon and corn flakes which sounds odd but was really fun and tasty! We later found there ice cream featured at a local restaurant as a dessert side.

Swan Oyster Depot

1517 Polk Street

San Francisco, CA 94109

(415) 673-2757

After a tour of Alcatraz Island, we walked over to the very popular 99 year-old Swan Oyster Depot for lunch. Very popular, we waited for about an hour for the tiny establishment to turn over. Inside, the restaurant is filled with seafood and is more like a fish market that decided to plug in a few stools and serve easy seafood dishes on a long marble bar. The menu is limited to New England Clam Chowder, fresh crab, shrimp, prawns, oyster, clams, and a few smoked fish. My wife and both had a cup of the clam chowder and expected heaven...but it was an oversalted and over clam sauced broth. That wasn't too great, but we did get a "combination" salad with huge chunks of crab, prawns, and shrimp over a simple bed of lettuce and a little dressing that was just awesome and worth standing in line for!

Here's the exterior:

Great Eastern Restaurant

649 Jackson Street

San Francisco, CA 94133

(415) 986-2500

For dinner that night was at Great Eastern in Chinatown. My wife had been with family before and recommended it. This was kind of our token Chinese stop of the tour and to be honest was the weakest meal we had. We ordered pot stickers (great), chow mien (eh), egg rolls (eh), Mongolian beef (great), and a chicken rice (fine). The restaurant has some fish aquariums in the back which I think is supposed to show the freshness of the fish...but I thought it looked gross and like the seafood was barely alive if at all.

Mama's on Washington Square

1701 Stockton St.

San Francisco, CA

415-362-6421

For brunch on Sunday, we headed to the San Francisco breakfast institution known as Mama's on Washington Square. We walked up to the restaurant right after it opened at 8am, to find it full and a line of 30 people outside. After a little more of an hour waiting, we were inside and waiting in line next to the cooks and the awesome selection of baked goods and ingredients:

My wife had the pancakes, which sounds boring, but the waitress said that they are the best with a house jam that they keep on the tables. The jam, a mix of fresh berries, was fantastic and made the cakes taste great. I ordered one of their house specials: dungeness crab Benedict with fresh spinach. This was pure seafood at breakfast heaven. To top it off I ordered a side of sausage links, which were clearly not bought at the store and were hand made and fantastic quality. The line here is a pain (we did get to watch a Chinatown new year's10k run by though), but in the end it was clearly worth it. Here was the line as we were leaving:

Frances

3870 17th Street

San Francisco, CA 94114

After working up an apatite riding bikes across the Golden Gate bridge and over to Sausolito, we walked down from the hotel to visit  Melissa Perello's Frances in the Castro neighborhood. Frances was awarded a Michelin star in its first year of operation and came highly recommended. The space is very small, with room for maybe 16 tables and a small bar and an even smaller kitchen. Because of the lack of space, reservations are impossible and go months in advance. While I tried to call 6 weeks in advance, they were all booked but mentioned that the bar is always open for walk-ins. We decided for an early dinner on our last night in town and made our way over before 5pm. By the time the doors opened there was a significant line and people were figuring out the proper order of who came first!

The menu changes daily based on local ingredients and is pretty limited. It's broken out into bouchees, appetizers, entrees, and sides. With 4 options within each category. Here was the menu the night we went:

First, we had the Applewood Smoked Bacon Beinets, served with a little creme fraiche. These are much talked about from previous reviewers on Yelp and Food Blogs, and they were not wrong...they were incredible. Light, fluffy, and fried...these were really good. Then we had the Panisse Frites, which consisted of 4 sticks of fried chickpeas and served with a spicy aioli. These were also a great starter, and reminded us both of a dish we had at Girl and the Goat here in Chicago this past summer.

 While my wife had the lettuce salad, which she loved, for an appetizer, while I had the white bean soup. The soup was fantastic, subtle, but a ton of flavor. For the main course I had the wonderful risotto and my wife had the steak. Both were very strong main dishes that, coupled with the previous dishes, made for a fantastically well rounded meal. And for dessert, we had their signature lumberjack cake with a scoop of Humphrey Slocum maple walnut ice cream.

Another neat thing about Frances is that they offer two house wines, for $1 an ounce. They came in a quasi-beaker with markings every 2 ounces down, filled to the top, and you only way for what you don't drink. Fantastic. In addition to wine, they also served beer in bottles and had one local breweries beer (Magnolia) on draft.

Verdict

I think San Francisco might be the best city in the country to eat and drink. The combination of a long growing season, proximity to farms (quality beef, poultry, and pork), west coast breweries, and nearby Napa Valley's wine. I don't think it's a coincidence that there are so many world class chefs practicing in the area!

Ad Hoc at Home in my Home.

Even though the Chicago Blizzard of 2011 and FedEx did its best to delay it, my copy of Thomas Keller's ad hoc at home was delivered yesterday.

According to a few Internet searches I'm about a year late to the Ad Hoc at Home party, but there is a reason for my recent Amazon order. Next week my wife and I are planning a trip to San Francisco and the Napa Valley and have a reservation to visit Ad Hoc.

For those that don't know, Thomas Keller is considered one of the greatest chefs in the world. He is the only chef in the world to own and operate two Michelin 3-Star restaurants: his landmark The French Laundry in Yountville, California, and Per Se in New York City.

While known for very high end culinary experiences at his restaurants, he claimed his dream restaurant was one that would serve "hamburgers and red wine." Around 2005, a building that used to hold a diner went up for sale just down the road from Keller's The French Laundry. He bought it, but didn't have the time to properly design, staff, and set up a new restaurant concept. However, since he was paying for the space he came up with the idea for a temporary, pop-up, family style restaurant. The menu changes daily and costs exactly the same every night ($50pp before drinks, tip, and taxes). The menu was inspired by the meals Keller at as a child as well as the "family" dinner kitchen staffs serve themselves. Ad Hoc was only planned to be open for a few months, but the restaurant was a huge success and its now permanent.

Ad Hoc at Home represents the family style, "user friendly," food Keller and it's staff  serve at Ad Hoc. But for someone well below the skill level need to tackle The French Landry Cookbook, this is pretty neat!

The book came just in time as this weekend my wife and I are having a few of her U of Chicago friends for dinner this weekend. We're planning on making a few of the recipes from the book.