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Summary: The One Cookbook You Need
Review: I have always prided myself on being able to improvise in the kitchen. I never learned how to "cook" though using proper techniques. Therefore, I was often intimidated to try new things even though I have a million cookbooks. No more! The recipes for even the most complicated dishes in this cookbook are well written and easy to follow. My confidence has grown as I try new dishes throughout this cookbook. p.s. makes a wonderful gift...
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Summary: The Bible
Review: It's not mere hyperbole that leads my friends and me to call Bittman's How to Cook Everything "The Bible." This is the perfect cookbook for those who like to wander the markets, buy whatever is freshest, and then figure out what to make with it when they get home. Bittman has recipes for every conceivable food. Have a nice pork chop in the freezer? Bittman has a couple of suggestions for what to do with it, plus lots of alternative ideas for the adventurous. The recipes are simple and great for home cooks of all levels. A must have for your collection! I use this book as a reference at least twice a week. My copy is literally held together by duct tape from the abuse it takes. Truly an invaluable resource.
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Summary: This book will encourage you to make new things!
Review: I love this book! It has given me the courage and know-how to make homemade pasta and sauce. Now I am finally using my hand-crank pasta maker. This book takes complicated recipes and breaks them down to their basic elements. Many recipes you can start with items sitting in your pantry. He then gives you
add-ins to "jazz up" the recipe. Now I am not afraid to make an recipe just because I am lacking an ingredient or two. This is a great addition to your cookbook library. I own tons of cookbooks but I like going to this one to find a simple basic version to start with. A great incentive to try new recipes!
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Summary: How to Cook Everything
Review: I own tons of cookbooks, and the entire collection of Cook's Illustrated from 1993 to current and I believe that Mark Bittmans book is one of the best a serious cook can own. He leaves room in the recipes for interpertation and that is such a good thing. I have learned a lot about seasoning from this book. I just purchased it for my 80 year old mother because after reviewing mine she (who happens to be a fabulous cook)said she needed to have it immediately. Get it, you will not be sorry!
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Summary: Somewhat useful, but dangerously pretentious
Review: There are a wide variety of pretty simple recipes in this book, and I have a few favorites that I make time and time again. However, it is not a book I turn to when I start thinking out of the blue, "Oh, I'd like to cook...." - some normal American or mildly ethnic dish. I have the Pillsbury Complete Cookbook for that. Many of the recipes are too exotic, and many are too bland; there is no happy medium. Almost all of them are inordinately labor intensive compared to the results you get. The author seems more concerned to inculcate beginning cooks with pseudo-gourmet methodology than he is to help them get dinner on the table. Most egregiously, approximately 90 percent of the savory recipes call for minced fresh parsley and freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Everybody knows that supermarket parsley is totally tasteless; but Bittman's culinary pretensions demand fresh herbs, so I guess a tasteless herb does the trick without requiring the reader to develop any real skill in seasoning food, a skill which Bittman has no competence to teach. And to sprinkle fresh Parmesan over everything shows a profound lack of appreciation for what Parmesan can do in the limited range of situations where it's really needed. The insistence on homemade stock is also annoying, for similar reasons. But my favorite is his insistence that instead of diced tomatoes, you should buy canned whole tomatoes and - no, not chop them - crush them with your hands! I guess big flat stringy pieces of canned tomato are the latest trend in New York? On the back of the book there is a quote from Jean-Georges Vongerichten: "Mark Bittman is the best home cook I know...." Does he hang out at his house all the time? I doubt that Vongerichten, or any other culinary professional, is actually on hand to observe Bittman's day to day cooking skills. Besides that, what does Jean-Georges Vongerichten know about home cooking as the average American understands it? Next to nothing, I'm sure. What's being said here is that the best home cook is the one who wastes the most time apeing gourmet restaurant techniques. And that is manifestly false. On the basis of the recipes alone I would have given four stars - there are some good recipes in the book, once you learn to ignore the parsley and the Parmesan and the manually smashed tomatoes - but the condescending elitism, which is also somewhat apparent in the tone of the text, knocks it down to three.
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Summary: Depends on what is meant by "everything".
Review: God bless America, I love you. But this book has a viewpoint that presumes "everything" is "America". That's annoyingly narrow minded. Mainly, though, it's inconvenient.
More worldly books have the old-fashioned "spoon and cup" measuring system down one side of the ingredient list and the metric measures down the other side. This book has only the old spoon and cup system. It does make grudging acknowledgment of an international market by including a few, not very good, conversion tables on the end papers.
Also, the contents seem very "American", notwithstanding the "foreign names" of the recipes.
For example, the ingredient nomenclature is defiantly American. No international alternatives in brackets in this book. You get eggplants and zucchinis and lump it. No aubergines or courgettes.
I was hoping that "everything" would include some of the plain cooking that I'd experienced in Europe, UK, the West Indies, the Near and Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. And the Southern States of the USA.
There are interpretations of some of the dishes, but they are such as might be served in a shopping mall in Buffalo.
On the bright side, the index is intelligently organised.
Also, I have been able to adapt many of the recipes, often by reducing the sweetness drastically, or by making allowances for the probability that the rice quantities and times are based on it having been bought in a colourful box at a supermarket. That kind of thing. It is excellent if you're a middle class, suburban American living and cooking in middle class, American suburbia.
Otherwise, it requires interprtation.
At least it did teach me that I've been pricking the shells of my eggs at the wrong end all these years. For that, thanks.
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Summary: Judge this one by it's cover!
Review: This has to be the BEST cookbook I have ever used! I have a cabinet full of cookbooks and this is the one I use time and time again!
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Summary: A NEW STANDARD
Review: This huge book has replaced my well-thumbed Joy of Cooking. A recipe for nearly anything you would ever need to cook can be found in its pages! The recipes are clearly written and easy to follow--a must in a cookbook, of course--but what sets it apart are the frequent boxes listing ways to dress up the recipes, should you want to do so. There are also boxes listing such things as "pasta dinners to make in a hurry" (I don't have the book at my fingertips, but I've referred to that particular box, whatever its exact title, several times!), with the page numbers of the recipes next to each item on the list. It's just a fantastic resource, and it's the gift I always give at wedding showers. Bittman has a real knack for cooking like we do, at home, and for showing us how to do it with style.
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Summary: Simple, but delicious, recipes
Review: This book has renewed my joy in cooking. It provides straightforward, simple information about how to create tasty, healthy and interesting dishes from scratch. I was overwhelmed by the gourmet cookbooks, underwhelmed by most introductory cookbooks, so I was delighted when I was given this book as a gift and found that I was able to make traditionally difficult foods like puff pastry and yeast breads on my first attempt. My family is no longer eating "cardboard" as I whip up everything from scratch these days. This is a very complete book that covers a variety of products and food types.
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Summary: Can't do without it!
Review: Every recipe I've made from this book has been delicious. As my iron-stomached husband can testify, this is no small boast, considering my "developing" cooking skills. I cannot do without this cookbook and when the pages started falling out just months after I bought it, as another reviewer mentioned, I contacted the publisher and made them send me another.
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