Recipes By Mark Bittman
973 recipes found
Sichuan Chicken With Chiles
This recipe unites those who would become ecstatic when they see a dish of chicken skin on a restaurant menu and those who would flee into the street. The keys to dishes that feature handfuls of dried chiles are one, don't eat the chiles. And two, don't let any of them break open while cooking; each broken one will intensify the heat exponentially. But they're sturdy devils, so this is not that difficult. The browned chiles lend the dish a nearly fiery smokiness, rather than just plain fire. Browning the skin renders its fat, which in turn is used to cook the other ingredients. It's best to stir-fry the ingredients in batches, to brown them nicely, then combine them and build the simple sauce.
Shrimp in Chardonnay Sauce
Boil a couple of cups of wine with shallots and butter as quickly as your stove will allow. When the wine is almost completely gone, cook the shrimp in this sauce. The keys to finishing the dish are seasoning and body: it will take plenty of salt and a fair pinch of spice. Serve this with good bread to sop up the sauce.
Twice-Cooked Mock Tandoori Chicken
The chicken recipe here, a kind of mock tandoori chicken, mitigates the bane of chicken grilling (or, for that matter, broiling), the roaring flame-up. By braising the chicken first, you effectively remove just about all the surface fat, practically eliminating the risk of setting the pieces on fire. This same treatment would work nicely with fatty lamb, like chunks of shoulder or even shanks, which without the initial braising would be just about impossible to grill.
Chile Chimichurri
Chile chimichurri is an enlivened, updated version of the classic vinegar-and-parsley sauce. Served alongside a grilled rib-eye, the sauce brightens up the dish and makes eating a steak at home feel like you're eating one while out on the town.
Rice With Cheese
Zucchini Pasta
Zucchini, not pasta, is the star of the show in this easy weeknight dish from Mark Bittman. Six zucchinis, two tomatoes and one onion for a half pound of pasta make this a vegetable-rich tangle that makes worthy use of your farmers' market haul.
Pad Thai-Style Rice Salad
My basic technique works like this: Cook the rice as you would pasta, in abundant salted water, tasting as you go; the cooking time will range from around 15 minutes for white rice to as long as 45 minutes for the most stubborn brown varieties (almost all will be done in 30 minutes or so). Drain and rinse; you want to get any remaining surface starch off so the salad isn’t too clumpy. When the rice is cool enough to handle, dress it; it will absorb a bit of the dressing. Add herbs and garnishes just before serving.
Hainanese Chicken With Rice
While this is the most basic version of Hainanese chicken, the best one is the provenance of devotees, who save the stock they don’t need for the rice, freeze it, and use it as a starting point for the next time they cook chicken this way. If you do this repeatedly, the stock will become stronger and stronger, as will the flavors of both chicken and rice. If you do this hundreds of times, the way restaurants do, the flavors will be quite intense. But even if you do it once, the dish is a total winner.
Baghali Polo
Home to one of the world’s largest Armenian populations outside Armenia, Burbank, Calif., is also home to Adana, where the chef Edward Khechemyan serves food that reflects his Armenian-American upbringing and his Iranian father, and is tinged with Russian influence. This Iranian dish, adapted from Mr. Khechemyan, is a combination of basmati rice, garlic powder, fava or lima beans and fresh dill. It's easy to make and pairs well with kebabs.
Pasta With Gorgonzola and Arugula
The main characters here are Gorgonzola and arugula, the first of which appears in a number of different pasta sauces, all unsurpassed for their creaminess. But in many instances, to me at least, Gorgonzola-based sauces tend to be too slick and rich. This makes the addition of the fresh-tasting spicy arugula from the supermarket even more welcome. Not only does it provide a little bit of crunch, but its odd version of heat also gives a bit of an edge to what could otherwise be a soft, almost insipid sauce. Don't forget to finish up with a few hearty cranks of the pepper mill. A full teaspoon for the entire dish is not too much. (The original recipe called for 1/4 pound of Gorgonzola and 2 tablespoons of butter, but after many readers commented that the dish needed more sauce, we tested it and agreed. The figures you see below are for doubling the sauce, but if you prefer it the old way, just halve the Gorgonzola and butter.)
Asparagus Salad, Japanese-Style
Here, ribbons of raw asparagus are simply dressed with a nutty vinaigrette of toasted sesame seeds, sesame oil and rice vinegar.
Pasta With Corn, Zucchini And Tomatoes
The two things I love most about this dish of summer vegetables and pasta are the crunch of the corn against the tenderness of the pasta and the fact that I cannot seem to settle on a combination of flavorings that I think is best. Chile powder, a little bit of cayenne, perhaps some cilantro are all excellent choices. But with pasta this seems too heretical even for a culinary atheist like me, so I usually go in a tamer direction: a suspicion of garlic with some fresh tarragon or basil. It is flexible not only in its flavorings but in its ingredients. You can use onions, garlic or shallots, singly or in combination; add string beans (or even fresh limas) to the mix; substitute eggplant for the zucchini. Think of it as a delicious mélange of whatever is on hand.
Baked Egg With Prosciutto and Tomato
It can be challenging to give eggs enough of an elegant twist to serve them to company, especially when the company arrives en masse, as tends to happen during the holidays. Enter the baked egg, at 15 minutes or so perhaps the slowest common cooking method (yes, I know, you can cook eggs for five hours if you choose to do so). But this is in a way the easiest method for cooking eggs in quantity.
No-Bake Blueberry Cheesecake Bars
There are those who may not find this sweet enough, and if that’s the case I recommend adding a quarter cup or so of sugar instead of increasing the honey, because you don’t want the honey flavor to become overpowering. Other flavor possibilities to add with the blueberries: any citrus you like; a teaspoon or so of very finely ground coffee or cocoa; or chopped raisins or, I suppose, chocolate chips. I prefer the straight honey-lemon combination, unadulterated.
Walnut Tart
If you seek inspiration for a better pie, you need look no further than a traditional French walnut tart. It is only marginally different, but vive that difference. The reason is butter: butter in the crust and butter in the filling. Oh, and cream in the filling, too. If they had pecans in France I’m sure they would use them, as you could in this recipe.
Pasta With Winter Squash and Tomatoes
If we're being truthful, this sweater weather recipe should really be called "winter squash and tomatoes with pasta," as the 2 pounds of squash far outweigh the 1/2 pound of penne it calls for. We think that's a good thing. Every single piece of pasta gets a generous coating of sauce, and there's even some left behind after the pasta is long gone. That's what bread is for.
Pasta With Double Sun-Dried Sauce
Chocolate Truffles
If the word “ganache” intimidates you, you are not alone. Maybe if the stuff were called “basic, simple and entirely superior chocolate sauce,” more people would make it. Ganache is not just chocolate sauce, though; it is also the basis for the easiest chocolate truffles.
"BBQ" Brisket
Brisket simply cannot be grilled over direct heat no matter how careful you are; it absolutely requires long, slow cooking. In fact, it’s difficult to grill (or broil) without some form of precooking, whether in aluminum foil (a venerable trick that makes sense) or in a barbecue pit. The slow braising phase of cooking the beef, in a ketchup-and-chile-based sauce, may take a while — it doesn’t surprise me when brisket takes three hours or even longer to become really tender — but the final browning can take as little as 10 minutes and produces fork-tender brisket.
Mark Bittman’s Bourbon Apple Cake
Soaking a cake in liquor or syrup is an old concept. Bake a standard cake, like this golden one, and when it's done, pour enough sweetened, butter-laden alcohol over the top to really saturate it. The result is strong and juicy and makes frosting superfluous.
Bourbon Balsamic Syrup
Consider this a recipe for a classic steak sauce, updated; that’s bourbon syrup, made with real ingredients in a flash. Sure, you could buy a sauce at the grocery store, but making it yourself is quicker and tastier. Serve it alongside a grilled rib-eye.
Mushroom Mille-Feuille With Tomato Coulis
Rich Torrisi developed this intense and terrific recipe for the menu at Dirty French, one of a number of chic restaurants in downtown Manhattan that he runs with Mario Carbone. It is on one hand a simple dish: thin-sliced mushrooms layered with butter and salt, then pressed and chilled until they resemble the French dessert known as mille-feuille, or "thousand leaves." Sautéing a slice of the resulting loaf in a hot pan, and then pairing it with a lovely coulis of fresh tomatoes and herbs? That elevates it to the divine.
Stuffed Flank Steak (Matambre)
Matambre is a contraction of the Spanish words for "kill" and "hunger" -- it's the hunger killer. It's beef traditionally stuffed with vegetables, herbs, hard-cooked egg and seasonings. I cannot abide hard-boiled egg in cooked meat dishes, so I've substituted olives. It is often served as a kind of cold cut in Argentina, where it was created, but it can also be served hot.
Grilled Pork Escabeche
You can use any cut of pork or chicken. The marinade is also good with mackerel or other fish (floured and sautéed or fried before marinating).