Recipes By Mark Bittman
973 recipes found
Fresh Strawberries With Almond Crème Anglaise
Strawberries, like asparagus, peaches, corn and a few other joys of summer, are perhaps best enjoyed unadulterated, at least at the beginning of the season, when the thrill of their newness is fresh. Later on, when you’re on your 10th quart, it’s time to tinker. I craved a kind of crème anglaise, a cooked but marginally thickened custard. But I wanted something a little more exciting than the standard vanilla-scented one. By jolting the custard with toasted almonds, I met that need, and with only a tad more work than in the original version. Strain out the cooked almonds if you want a creamy sauce (and you should). Served warm, over good strawberries, with slivered almonds as a garnish, this is almost as good an option as shortcake.
Southeast Asian Mussel Salad
Zuppa Arcidossana
Wheat Berries With Sesame, Soy Sauce and Scallions
Wheat berries do take a while to cook, maybe half an hour, maybe 45 minutes, sometimes even longer, but you can cook a lot of it and keep it in the refrigerator and heat up a little bit at a time as you need it. Once the wheat berries are cooked, top with sesame oil, scallions and soy sauce. Try it for breakfast when cold cereal and toast aren’t warming your heart.
15-Minute Fried Herbed Chicken
This chicken takes so little time but tastes so good that it raises the bar for weeknight cooking. Chicken pieces are smothered in an herb and onion paste, dredged in flour and fried in the amount of time needed to make a salad. The amount of oil you need to crisp up the chicken is minimal, and the flavor is terrific.
Simple Bread Pudding
This recipe is proof-positive that leftover bread can easily be converted to dessert without much work. There’s room for customization here: Consider adding fresh or dried fruit or a combination of spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and cardamom. Bread pudding makes a great brunch dish, served with fresh fruit compote. Or add a handful of chocolate chips before baking for a decidedly more decadent outcome. Discover more ideas for the big day in our best Thanksgiving recipes collection.
Noodle Pudding
Noodles, which routinely find themselves saved as leftovers in the back of the refrigerator, can easily be converted into dessert. Milk, butter, cinnamon and eggs combine for the custard that surrounds the cooked pasta, and the whole dish is topped with raisins. If you don’t like raisins, almost any dried fruit — cranberries or cherries, for example — would be a nice substitution.
Grilled Fish With Pimentón Aioli
Pimentón is made from a red pepper similar to that used to make paprika, but it’s smoked before grinding. It can be hot (though not super hot) or mild (which is called “sweet,” though the flavor is more bitter than anything else). Whether you know it or not, you’ve probably eaten it: it’s the dominant spice in chorizo. It’s also among the best examples of how appealing the addition of smoke can be. Here it goes on both the fish you’re going to grill and in the aioli you’re going to use to accompany it. The combination is outstanding.
Octopus, Galician Style
Grilled Chicken Wings With Provençal Flavors
Like most chicken parts, wings are best grilled in two stages. Start them over indirect heat, away from the hottest part of the grill. Cook them there, more or less undisturbed, until most of their fat is rendered and they’re just about cooked through. This takes only 10 or 15 minutes, especially if you cut the wings into sections first (more on this in a second). At this point they’ll be pale and not especially appetizing, but move them over to the hot part of the grill, brown them under a watchful eye, and they’ll turn gorgeous.
Pancakes
The basic pancake is made from a simple batter of eggs, flour, milk and baking powder for leavening. You can use different types of flour if you want to experiment with whole wheat or buckwheat. And you can also add fruit to the mixture. You might also enjoy this video of the recipe, which walks through a few variations. The batter can be made from scratch in about the same time it takes to make toast. The most time-consuming part of making pancakes, of course, is cooking them. But that time is so short you should consider these an everyday convenience food, not a special-occasion feast. Cook this recipe a few times and it may become part of your weekly routine. —Sam Sifton
Mark Bittman's Tomatillo Salsa
Salmon With Yogurt-Curry Sauce
With its rich flesh, salmon is so strongly flavored that you can pair it with just about anything. Here I cook it with a yogurt sauce that contains just chopped cucumber and spices. If you use farmed salmon and a nonstick skillet, you won't even need to add any fat. That's because farmed salmon is so high in fat (fattier than wild salmon, and it's the beneficial omega-3 type, too) that it's difficult to overcook. This is not to say you can put it on the stove and walk away, but that precision is a goal rather than a necessity. Even if you like your fish cooked through, the result will be a piece of meat that still has a fair amount of moisture in it.
Braised Pork With Red Wine
This easy recipe can be made in a saucepan, Dutch oven or slow cooker. The long simmer gives the pork shoulder, an inexpensive but versatile cut, a chance to absorb the robust flavors of red wine, carrot and garlic that it’s cooked alongside. Serve it over egg noodles and topped with parsley for a hearty, satisfying dinner.
Masala Winter Squash
Roasted Winter Squash With Seared Cod
Roasting slices of winter squash with nothing more than butter or oil is very effective. It's a preparation that can form the basis of a main dish (as it does here, with cod) or stand alone, especially when sprinkled with a dusting of a good spice mixture.
Chicken With Green Olives
This dish, which draws inspiration and ingredients from Moroccan cooking, is astonishing for its complexity, even in this simple form. It features sweet spices like cinnamon and ginger offset by garlic and paprika. But what makes it a real winner is the combination of those flavors with lemon and green olives, both of which have a mouth-puckering quality that, combined with the spice mix, is enchanting.
Pasta Puttanesca
There are almost as many explanations for the origins of pasta puttanesca as there are ways to make it. Ostensibly a sauce invented and made by prostitutes, it was designed to lure customers with its powerful aroma. Whatever the origin, no better cold-weather pasta sauce has come down to us. Puttanesca can be made completely with ingredients from the larder; in fact, it can be prepared entirely without ingredients that require refrigeration, though a bit of a fresh herb at the end does help. The basis is a garlicky tomato sauce; canned tomatoes are preferable here. This is brought to a high level of flavor by the addition of anchovies, capers and olives. Red pepper flakes make things even better. The whole process is ridiculously easy.
Stuck-Pot Rice With Yogurt and Spices
Rice isn’t actually “ruined” when it sticks to the bottom of the pot. Indeed, in a lot of places and across the Middle East, stuck-pot rice is encouraged for its sticky, crusty deliciousness. This is a dead-easy way to cook it, before serving with yogurt and spices. It’s homey and delicious, beautiful and fragrant, all at once.
Roasted Brussels Sprouts With Garlic
This recipe for roasted brussels sprouts from Mark Bittman is our most popular version and is perfect as a Thanksgiving side dish. If you haven’t yet figured out a go-to recipe, this simple preparation is the answer. It results in sweet caramelized brussels sprouts that will make a believer out of anyone. Discover more ideas for the big day in our best Thanksgiving recipes collection.
Seared Steak
For "grilling" a steak indoors, a cast iron pan really can't be beat. Cast iron can withstand super high heat, and it distributes that heat evenly, meaning you get a perfect brown crust that seals in the meat's juices. You don't need much in the way of seasoning; just a generous sprinkle of salt and freshly ground black pepper. A standard cast iron pan works great for this, or if you like the look of grill marks, get your hands on a ridged cast-iron grill pan.
Red-Fried Fish
Sea Bass Fillets with Mushroom Beurre Noisette
