IACP Award Winner * Named one of “The 25 Most Influential Cookbooks From the Last 100 Years”
by T: The New York Times Style Magazine 2024 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of The
French Laundry Cookbook and the thirtieth anniversary of the acclaimed French Laundry
restaurant in the Napa Valley—“the most exciting place to eat in the United States” ( The New
York Times ). The most transformative cookbook of the century celebrates this milestone by
showcasing the genius of chef proprietor Thomas Keller himself. Keller is a wizard a purist a
man obsessed with getting it right. And this his first cookbook is every bit as satisfying as
a French Laundry meal itself: a series of small impeccable highly refined intensely focused
courses. Most dazzling is how simple Keller' s methods are: squeegeeing the moisture from
the skin on fish so it sautées beautifully poaching eggs in a deep pot of water for perfect
shape the initial steeping in the shell that makes cooking raw lobster out of the shell a
cinch using vinegar as a flavor enhancer the repeated washing of bones for stock for the
cleanest clearest tastes. From innovative soup techniques to the proper way to cook green
vegetables to secrets of great fish cookery to the creation of breathtaking desserts from
beurre monté to foie gras au torchon to a wild and thoroughly unexpected take on coffee and
doughnuts The French Laundry Cookbook captures through recipes essays profiles and
extraordinary photography one of America' s great restaurants its great chef and the food
that makes both unique. One hundred and fifty superlative recipes are exact recipes from the
French Laundry kitchen—no shortcuts have been taken no critical steps ignored all have been
thoroughly tested in home kitchens. If you can' t get to the French Laundry you can now
re-create at home the very experience Wine Spectator described as “as close to dining
perfection as it gets.”
