Product Description
Thomas Keller shares family-style recipes that you can make any or every day.
In the book every home cook has been waiting for, the revered Thomas Keller turns his imagination to the American comfort foods closest to his heart—flaky biscuits, chicken pot pies, New England clam bakes, and cherry pies so delicious and redolent of childhood that they give Proust’s madeleines a run for their money. Keller, whose restaurants The French Laundry i… More >>
#1 by Travel bum on May 22, 2010 - 10:17 am
Wished book would have had more interesting food recipes. Don’t usually like chef cookbooks because I don’t have a prep staff. Recipes were simple–perhaps too simple.
Rating: 2 / 5
#2 by Lynne A. Sims on May 22, 2010 - 1:01 pm
Lots of lovely pictures which are very helpful when I’m makeing a new recipe. It’s a little larger and heavier than I anticipated.
Rating: 4 / 5
#3 by Helmut Hamm on May 22, 2010 - 1:47 pm
I love ‘family style’ cooking, but I don’t have a big family around all the time, nor do I run a restaurant. Instead, I usually cook for a party of two.
And here’s where my critizism with this book comes in: Practically all recipes are given for at least 6 eaters, sometimes 6-8 or even 8-10 servings.
While reading this book, I found it extremely tiresome, that, in order to put the book to practical use, I would need to break down every single recipe. For example, brining chicken is an excellent idea to start with, but a recipe for about two gallons of brine, enough for 4-5 birds? That’s nowhere near my reality. Plus, the brine doesn’t keep very well, so you’re supposed to use it in a timely manner. Brined chicken for two weeks in a row? I don’t think so.
There’s another aspect that bothered me, maybe this book is just ‘too American’ for me. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of ‘human interest’, but for my taste, he goes way over the line here. For example, a recipe that is introduced as ‘the last meal my father had before he died and I’m so glad I could cook it for him’ doesn’t really stimulate my appetite. With all due respect to the author’s personal feelings, but if I want stories like that, I’ll buy a biography, not a cookbook.
I have no doubt that this is a good book for some, but I eventually decided to return it.
Rating: 3 / 5
#4 by L. Imhoff on May 22, 2010 - 2:10 pm
…that the staggeringly talented Mr. Keller could speak in a language that even an average cook could understand! The recipes I’ve tried so far make sense, and taste great as well. I can’t wait to make more.
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by Richard Jacobs on May 22, 2010 - 4:27 pm
From Soup to Nuts, this book has it all…literally. If you own one cook book this should be it. Forget about The Joy of Cooking and Julia Child’s Art of French Cooking, this is it!
Rating: 5 / 5