The Minimalist Cooks at Home: Recipes That Give You More Flavor Out of Fewer Ingredients in Less Time Book

Mark Bittman's New York Times column, "The Minimalist," is a much-consulted source for easy but polished recipes. The Minimalist Cooks at Home features these less-is-more recipes plus others never before published--formulas that require a minimum of technique and/or ingredients. Bittman's dishes draw on the world's cuisines and, taken together, represent what might be called a new kind of home cooking. Anyone seeking delicious everyday food that's quick to put on the table yet satisfies the demands of modern palates should embrace the book. In succinct chapters that cover the major dish categories, salads through desserts, Bittman offers fare like Roast Cod with Tangerine Sauce, Chicken Under a Brick, Real Paella, and 15-Minute Fruit Gratin. These approachable, flexible dishes should enter the repertoire of cooks at all skill levels, as well as please those they feed. Bittman also includes recipes that illustrate a particular cooking technique or sequence; his Creamy Broccoli Soup, for example, presents a formula--three parts liquid, two parts vegetable, one part dairy--that can be applied widely to create new dishes instinctively. Cooking lessons like these, plus shortcuts and multiple suggestions for flavorful variations, make the book particularly useful. With photos that illustrate a number of the techniques, and recipe notes that further explore dish anatomy, the book delivers on its promise to provide strategies for good eating with little fuss. --Arthur BoehmRead More