Look, I love Thomas Keller. I love his restaurants and his cookbooks and his many levels of Kellerosity. I love the recent Wine Spectator article that makes it clear that at one point not all that long ago, Thomas Keller was just a dude who'd worked for some other dudes in restaurants that didn't always do that well. I especially love Ad Hoc, both the cookbook and the restaurant, to the point that even though I live on the opposite side of the country and have no immediate plans to trek back to Yountville, I often visit the Ad Hoc website to see what's for dinner that night.
That said, I will never make his butternut squash soup from the Bouchon cookbook again.
Not that it wasn't delicious. It was. But between roasting half the squash and sauteeing the other half, shoving the whole lot of it through a sieve to attain absolute velvety smoothness, and ultimately regretting my use of store-bought vegetable broth even though homemade broth would have added three more hours to a recipe that had already taken four, it just didn't seem worth the final result.
However, it looked gorgeous. And next time, I can get all that gorgeousness with a lot less effort, by making a simpler soup -- or, if things are really tight, just buying it -- and topping the soup with a dollop of creme fraiche whipped with nutmeg and two crossed leaves of fried sage.
Sometimes it's the things that take the least time that impress the most.
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