A Great Chef Fires Up The Heat

Thomas Keller is one of those chefs people speak of with awe. His restaurant, the cheap rings Laundry, is a place where people dream about going. All of which inspires a few to make the trek to the little town of Yountville, in Napa Valley, and spend hundreds of dollars to dine there.

But down the street is Keller's homier eatery called Ad Hoc. It offers family style meals - no choices - whatever they're putting on the table that night.

We traveled to Ad Hoc to sample recipes from Thomas Keller's new cookbook, "Ad Hoc at Home."

Mr. THOMAS KELLER (Chef, Owner, The French Laundry, Ad Hoc): Did you guys get some water, coffee, tea?

MONTAGNE: That would be Chef Keller, showing the way into the kitchen where he's going to prepare us a meal.

Mr. KELLER: Cooks always love to be in the kitchen. I can't go to cheap tiffany house and not help in the kitchen. I don't care if it's chopping parsley or peeling onions or whatever. I mean, it's just, it's part of my nature. I want to be in the kitchen.

MONTAGNE: Ad Hoc celebrates the foods Thomas Keller would have eaten as a kid. For a man made famous for dishes that are more like high art, Keller appreciates the power of the humblest of flavors.

Mr. KELLER: Take ketchup, for example. The benchmark for ketchup in America is really Heinz. I remember years ago, when chefs thought that they wanted to make their own ketchups in their restaurants and you had all these different ketchups that you had in restaurants. Nobody really liked it, everybody wanted to get a bottle of Heinz. It's because we grew up on those flavors.

Peanut butter - I mean, Skippy, to me is what peanut butter should taste like. I know that maybe naturally ground peanuts into peanut silver bracelets may be better for me, but Skippy's really that flavor that I'm looking for. So, we have to really kind of respect some of those flavor profiles that we're dealing with.