Ad Hoc at my Mom's House

Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home certainly got a lot of buzz this holiday season. It seemed to get reviewed by every cookbook critic, and make every "top gifts" list.

Come mid December, demand for the book was rampant, and it appeared to be poised for a top-notch holiday run. But apparently the publisher was the last to know—Ad Hoc at Home was out of stock, everywhere you looked.

I ordered one for my brother, wrapped an IOU for Christmas, and the book just arrived this week. It’s beautiful. Coffee table-worthy. So much so that we discussed how we’ll just need to get over its beauty and get it dirty like every other cook book.

And it’s a really great resource—step by step photo instructions on how to piece a chicken, transferrable tips sprinkled in to the recipes.

We tried our first recipe last night for my mom’s birthday—Chicken Mar i Muntanya, or paella. In my family, the best meals are the all-hands-on-deck kind, where everyone’s busy and working together. Someone’s frying chicken, someone’s washing dishes, someone’s chopping parsley, and someone’s holding the baby. And this was certainly an all-hands-on-deck meal.

We loved it. And I’m excited to try some more recipes from the book, which was worth the wait. It was so good that it made up for the disaster of a coconut birthday cake that I made and ruined.

Check out Chicken Mar i Muntanya, and let me know what you think.