Mark Bittman's Quick and Easy Recipes from the New York Times

Cookbook Review by Kathleen Daelemans and her Mom

These reviews started when I was trying to meet a deadline one day but couldn't get a single word down on paper because my Mom was in a chatty mood, eager to tell me about her new "favorite" cookbook. They're all her favorite. She's fascinated with cookbooks and enjoys discovering what makes one culinary tome better than another. And I love hearing her opinions.

My Mom has a room lined with bookshelves filled with cookbooks she's stolen from me she swears she bought for herself. The room used to be my bedroom. And then it was my sister's. Now it's my Mom's library. There's an overstuffed leather Stickley chair and ottoman and an antique table lamp leftover from her childhood home.  The room is sunny and lived in. Not cluttered lived in. It's got clean lines. It's the kind of lived in that makes you want to walk in and have a seat. And she does every chance she gets.

When I come over and tell my Mom it's time for another cookbook review for the website we hang out in her library. I set up my laptop and sit in the stiff uncomfortable chair and she stretches out in her scrumptious Stickley easy chair. She talks too fast and I type too slow but somehow we make it work.

Cookbook: Quick and Easy Recipes from the New York Times, Mark Bittman,
Broadway Books, 2007
List: $18.95
Amazon: $12.89
Spatulas: **** (It would get 5 Spatulas if all the recipes were new. Nonetheless the book is great.)    

Had to Have it Because: I like Mark Bittman. I have other cookbooks of his. He's very practical and down to earth. He doesn't have extra steps. He doesn't require you to get all the dishes in your kitchen dirty and he guides you to get dinner on the table in a hurry. Sometimes it's fun to do recipes that are all complicated and terribly time consuming…you know…like when you're snowed in for a month.

But on the whole it's dinner and the quicker I get dinner over with the quicker I can send your father downstairs to watch television on his big screen TV which means I won't see him again until breakfast and that's fine by me. He's retired you know. Yesterday he spent two hours cleaning up a pair of needle nose pliers with a Dremel tool he bought at a garage sale for a quarter. I had my hospital overnight bag packed and ready. Your sister was on high alert to water my plants. I don't know how much longer I can take this.
Retail Reality Check: When I settled in to read my shiny new cookbook after reading the forward as I always do, I stumbled on the fine print: "Originally published as The Minimalist Cooks at Home, The Minimalist Cooks Dinner and The Minimalist Entertains," this meant I already owned two thirds of the recipes in this new book because being a Bittman fan I have all his books.

But since I'm frugal I decided I couldn't just let the book sit on my nightstand unread so I read it and everything that was old looked new again. I found a whole bunch of recipes I meant to try but hadn't and some that I had tried and meant to try again.

Love, Love, Loved: The Fastest Roast Chicken, page 121, It's fast and it's good. It's chicken, salt and pepper. I can handle that. This is my absolute favorite recipe (this is her daughter, Kathleen. I'm her editor. Most recipes she likes are her "absolute favorite". Proceed with caution)

Simplest Sautéed Chicken with Garlic, page 140. It's foolproof. You put a cut up whole chicken and arrange it in a cold non-stick skillet and then turn on the heat. You cook the chicken until it's brown on one side and then cook it until it's brown on the other side. 

I don't usually add the garlic. I always forget the last few ingredients of most recipes. I leave them on the cutting board. Minced parsley always gets minced. And always gets thrown down the garbage disposal when we finish dinner. Not because I don't like it. Just because I can't remember by then. I'm tired. I've read the recipe 100 times. Your sister has interrupted my efforts to get a decent meal on the table by calling me three times in a row, I've screened at least three solicitors and I've had it with your father by then.

The Beet Roesti with Rosemary, page 221. This is basically a potato pancake without the potatoes. Who doesn't like potato pancakes? To prepare Beet Roestis all you do is basically peel and grate a couple of beets and mix with them some flour and butter and rosemary and cook them potato pancake style until they're golden and crunchy. I just love these. Tomorrow's Saturday. I'm going to buy some beets at the Farmer's Market and make these for dinner. This will send your father into a fit but I'll serve bread and butter. He likes it when I serve bread and butter when he hates the entrée. I'll get yellow beets. He says they don't taste so much like dirt.

Shrimp Roman Style on page 71 is another really great recipe. It's shrimp in tomato sauce that you can serve with pasta or crusty bread. If you're rich you can substitute scallops and if you're adventurous you can substitute squid for the shrimp. Your father likes this because it reminds him of his childhood. It's pasta.

Eh: I'm not going to try the Grilled Bread Salad again because every time I try a Bread Salad recipe it sounds really, really good but it never is. It always ends up tasting like soggy bread. And I can't talk your father into that again.

Can't Wait to Try: Pizza with Green Tomatoes, page 257. This sounds different and I love the tang of green tomatoes. The Pizza with Zucchini and Sausage on page, 256 sounds good too but I'd probably turn that into pasta. Ziti with Butter and Parmigiano-Reggiano on page 278 sounds easy and good. Your father has never been late for a meal with butter in the title. It only calls for two tablespoons of butter for four people so I'm sure it won't kill us. Pasta with Gorgonzola and Arugula on page 262 is tabbed which means it sounded good to me but I don't like gorgonzola and your father hates arugula so if I make it I'll make it with Maytag blue cheese and he'll just have to deal with the arugula which means I'll have to deal with him fake choking on the stems for the entire meal. Which makes me think of cats and hairballs. So maybe I'll skip this one.

If I Had It To Do All Over Again Would I Buy it Again? Absolutely! Great Chef. Great book!