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The Minimalist Cooks at Home: Recipes That Give You More Flavor from Fewer Ingredients in Less Time (Hardcover)

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4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (48 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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 Boehm

From Publishers Weekly

Adding to the popular subgenre of cookbooks that emphasize good food achieved with simplicity and speed, Bittman's latest delivers the goods. Exhibiting the lucid and breezy style that characterizes his weekly New York Times column, "The Minimalist," which served as a launchpad for this book, he notes the preparation and cooking time for each basic dish and provides suggestions for variations. Many of the recipes are easy and familiar (Pear and Gorgonzola Green Salad, Linguine with Garlic and Oil, Chicken with Vinegar and Strawberries with Balsamic Vinegar), while others offer more unusual combinations: Pasta with Red Wine Sauce calls for spaghetti to finish cooking in garlic-flavored wine; Negima is a Japanese dish that consists of thin slices of beef, chicken, veal or pork wrapped around scallion bundles and grilled. The Minimalist's Thanksgiving Turkey and the Minimalist's Choucroute take longer, requiring 2 1/2 hours and 2 hours, respectively; the former is stuffed with a Pierre Franey-inspired sandwich of bread, chicken livers and parsley. Among toothsome sides are Beet Roesti with Rosemary and a Fennel Gratin redolent with crumbled blue cheese. There are many inspired ideas here, but Bittman fans will also encounter a few reworked recipes from his previous books How to Cook Everything and Fish. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Broadway (April 4, 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0767903617
ISBN-13: 978-0767903615
Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds

Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (48 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #226,441 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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	45% buy the item featured on this page: The Minimalist Cooks at Home: Recipes That Give You More Flavor from Fewer Ingredients in Less Time 4.2 out of 5 stars (48)
	22% buy How to Cook Everything (Completely Revised 10th Anniversary Edition), Completely Revised 10th Anniversary Edition: 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Food 4.6 out of 5 stars (60) $20.47
	16% buy The Minimalist Cooks Dinner 4.0 out of 5 stars (19) $17.16
	9% buy How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food 4.6 out of 5 stars (134) $20.47

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Customer Reviews

48 Reviews

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

Average Customer Review

4.2 out of 5 stars (48 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

224 of 229 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strange and Indispensable, May 1, 2000

By	"buddy_x" (Cleveland, OH USA) - See all my reviews

What a strange and wonderful book this is. I started here, and not with Bittman's other book, because I didn't want to be overwhelmed. The recipes are at once more exotic and (even) more simple than I thought they'd be. One can probably learn more about cooking from this slim little book than he would by reading The Joy of Cooking cover to cover. All the same, you won't find here recipes for meat loaf or macaroni and cheese. The book is too urbane and international in its approach for that. A dish has to be both simple and, somehow, elegant. Grown-up. Bittman sees fit to include recipes for things like duck and lemongrass ginger soup with mushrooms in this short primer-not things that, at face value, I'd expect myself to need or even want on a quotidian basis. But there's the rub. The reader quickly learns that, in Bittman's cosmos, virtually any ingredient is interchangeable with any other ingredient. Even a main ingredient-chicken or fish-can be and should be readily and unhesitatingly substituted for what's available in the refrigerator- right now. At the end of every recipe comes a coda called "With Minimal Effort," and it is here that the recipes transcend themselves to inspire and instruct. Here are the substitutions, additions, embellishments, variations and manipulations of the core recipes that transform this from being just a little book to being a little book that can change the way you cook.

We shouldn't be running out to buy things. The mantra is making due with only a few high quality items that are already on hand. This is infinitely refreshing vis-a-vis a world of Martha Stewarts - cooks whose recipes seem to me rigidly conceived and which fetishize individual ingredients. Here, it's all about making intelligent substitutions based on a firm grasp of technique and knowing "where the flavor comes from." When I said the book was "strange," what I found so was the juxtaposition of certain recipes that - along with those for duck and lemongrass ginger soup - are so simple as to seem both obvious and antithetical to the book's overall sophistication. Not so. Once you get the hang of it, you learn that simple IS sophisticated. Often, more so than something with 25 different ingredients. Preparing a meal of linguine with olive oil and garlic can be nothing less than learning to cook all over again. I seem to recall making that, years ago, and yet this most pristine dish had fallen out of my repertoire. I had been brainwashed into believing that "more is more." Having reintroduced the dish, I want to make some substitutions with the very same dish tomorrow night: adding an herb here, a vegetable there. But not too many. I won't be making any special trips to the market. Bittman wouldn't want me to. Besides, too many ingredients might muck up the individual flavors, which is want I want to come through.

One could probably make a case for the idea that to master all of the recipes in this book would lead one to be able to cook anything. As the author points out, recipes can be "symbolic" of other recipes. It's nothing less than an education to be in the presence of a teacher whose goal is to demystify cooking itself by helping us make these connections.

My only bone to pick with Bittman is a tendency to underestimate the preparation time of some of the recipes. I myself have never peeled and minced garlic in less than fifteen minutes. If you can, you'll get even more out of this book than I did.

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89 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Mentor in the Kitchen, June 9, 2000

By	Paula L. Skartland (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

I began flipping through this book when it first arrived and found myself driven to read it cover-to-cover. Mark Bittman's approach is like having a food mentor in my very own kitchen. Providing the right amount of information about the ingredients and the process PLUS ideas for modifying the recipes to suit the contents of your refrigerator is incredibly helpful. His practical, down-to-earth method is more like great coaching--informative and inspiring!

The Lemongrass-Ginger Soup on page 16 pleased everyone in my soup loving family (which includes two teenage boys). Mark's section called "With Minimal Effort" includes multiple ways to enhance/modify every recipe. And did I mention the Pasta & Potatoes recipe, page 59? Seasoned chefs may shudder but I have to say, it's a slice of heaven if heaven serves comfort food.

Mark Bittman, I'm grateful for your practical yet food loving approach to getting tasty dinners on the table quickly. We're having a Lemongrass-Ginger Soup variation tonight!

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62 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Get "How To Cook Everything" Instead, November 28, 2000

By A Customer

I can't say enough good things about "How To Cook Everything," which is my cooking bible. However, "The Minimalist" seems to offer little new in terms of technique or reference, and has only a small fraction of the number of recipes in HTCE - many of which are identical or very simalar to ones in HTCE. If you have HCTE, this book is redundant. If you don't have HCTE, get it instead - it's 5 times the book at essentially the same price. I have both books, and always find myself reaching for the dog-eared and food-stained copy of "How To Cook Everything".

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Short Cookbook!!!
I am passionate about cooking, but I am always pressed for time. This book is the one I can always turn to when truly crunched for time, ingredients, or inspiration. Read more

Published 7 months ago by Jane B. Zimmerman

5.0 out of 5 stars The Minimalist Cooks at Home
I enjoy Mark Bittmans books and own sereral other Cookbooks of his. Each brings a new simple aproach to cooking. Read more

Published 17 months ago by Deborah Herman

3.0 out of 5 stars Great book for some, but not for others.
Every week for the past 7 years, I have eagerly read Mark Bittman's NY Times column, so naturally I bought this book when it first came out. Read more

Published on July 27, 2007 by Sarah Schwartz

3.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good
I liked his approach to making a tasty meal with minimal effort, but I evidently have different tastes than the author. Read more

Published on August 12, 2006 by Raleigh

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect for WannaBe Improvisational Cooks
My mother was a great cook. Without recipes, she simply stood at the stove and threw things in the pot. Thus she rarely made the same thing twice but everything was delicious. Read more

Published on June 2, 2005 by Alanna Kellogg

5.0 out of 5 stars If you just want to cook a few dishes well, buy this book!
`The Minimalist Cooks at Home' is from New York Times culinary columnist, Mark Bittman, who is filling a classic Times role created by the noted French chef, Pierre Franey, who... Read more

Published on April 6, 2005 by B. Marold

5.0 out of 5 stars great cookbooks
These are great cookbooks (this and his other minimalist cookbook). Not only are the recipes fast, delicious, and simple, the flavors are clear, interesting, and distinct. Read more

Published on June 22, 2004

4.0 out of 5 stars An Essential for Cookbook-Addicts (Seasoned or Amateur)
I have constantly butted heads with any whisper of authoritarian tone, especially in regards to the kitchen. Read more

Published on April 2, 2003 by Vanessa

5.0 out of 5 stars Best cookbook I ever bought
The only cookbook that I regularly use, which makes it the best I have ever purchased by a long way. Read more

Published on January 12, 2003 by digerati

4.0 out of 5 stars Great and easy recipes
This book has the same appeal as Bittman's NYTimes column. It's great when you want a different and quick recipe, but don't want to pore through a thick cooking encyclopedia to... Read more

Published on December 21, 2002 by Pam C.

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