Recipes By Mark Bittman
973 recipes found
Pepper Fried Rice
I was once amazed to find I could use frozen red and yellow bell pepper strips straight from the package. (I am aware that this is not a revelation to everyone; call me stupid.) The peppers are great in a simple quick dish of fried rice. If frozen vegetables are handled expeditiously, they are often better than buying 'fresh' at the store." It's true. Freezing, especially after blanching (which is almost always a part of the process), locks in both flavor and nutrients. And the use of I.Q.F. (individually quick frozen) technology has become routine, and the results are profoundly better than freezing vegetables in solid blocks. (These products are almost always sold in plastic bags, not boxes, and as a rule you should buy frozen vegetables in plastic bags.)
Flat Omelet with Rutabaga
Spaetzle
Expand the concept of pasta a bit, and you arrive at spaetzle, the quickly made and rather thin dough (somewhat akin to savory pancake batter) that is often “grated” into boiling water on a spaetzle maker, a tool that looks like a grater without sharp edges. I find spaetzle makers unnervingly tricky, so I prefer to do what I've often seen done by Alsatians, for whom spaetzle is traditional: drop the batter by the spoonful into boiling water. As with all pasta, the more fragile the batter is, the lighter the result will be, so don't make it too stiff; just stiff enough to hold together.
Buttered Spaetzle
Expand the concept of pasta a bit, and you arrive at spaetzle, the quickly made and rather thin dough (somewhat akin to savory pancake batter) that is often “grated” into boiling water on a spaetzle maker, a tool that looks like a grater without sharp edges. I find spaetzle makers unnervingly tricky, so I prefer to do what I've often seen done by Alsatians, for whom spaetzle is traditional: drop the batter by the spoonful into boiling water. As with all pasta, the more fragile the batter is, the lighter the result will be, so don't make it too stiff; just stiff enough to hold together.
Vietnamese Stir-Fried Vegetables With Chicken Or Shrimp
Lentils With Bulgur And Herb Salad
Ricotta Pudding
Tuscan Farro Soup
Simple yet amazing. This healthy soup, a kind of minestrone with farro, is ubiquitous in Lucca, a city in Tuscany. The farro is traditional, but you could use spelt or barley with good results.
Browned And Braised Fish In Tomato Sauce
Chocolate Caramel Mousse
You can look at this as chocolate mousse stiffened by caramel or as a perfect caramel enriched by chocolate. Either way it is so rich, thick, gooey and creamy, so childish in a way, that it almost requires something completely sophisticated to offset it. Orange confit perhaps. Of course it can be eaten by itself, too.
Oxtail Soup
Pam Panyasiri served a version of this simple soup at her beloved restaurant, Pam Real Thai Food, in Midtown until it closed in 2001. It is not a staple of Thai menus, but it should be: it would make a French chef bow down in reverence. There is almost nothing to it: oxtails, boiled in seasoned water until very soft, then finished with chili, lime juice, scallion and cilantro, and usually crisp-fried onions or shallots.
Crispy Pork And Red Peppers In Chili Sauce
Herb-Poached Tenderloin With Barolo Sauce
Chicken Larb
Chicken Laab
Steamed Cod With Coconut Chutney
Ginger Cucumber Salad With Scallops
This 2004 recipe draws its inspiration from Thailand, where Mark Bittman first sampled it. The original was topped with shrimp, but his version uses scallops, “a slightly more unusual and elegant combination,” but don’t feel tied to just scallops: any grilled meat, poultry or fish work just as well here.
Vanilla Crème Brûlée
Five simple ingredients – cream, vanilla, salt, eggs and sugar – make for an exquisitely rich and elegant dessert. Most crème brûlée recipes require the use of a small propane torch to achieve the crackly sugar top, but this version offers a simpler (and safer) solution: your oven's broiler. One thing to note: Be sure to let the custard set for several hours in the refrigerator before brûléeing the top, otherwise you'll end up with soupy custard.
Roast Spatchcock Turkey
In 2002, Mark Bittman published this revolutionary approach to roasting the Thanksgiving turkey, which allows you to cut the cooking time of the average turkey by about 75 percent while still presenting an attractive bird. Simply cut out the backbone — or ask your butcher to do it for you — and spread the bird out flat before roasting, a technique known as spatchcocking that is commonly used with chickens. Roasted at 450 degrees, a 10-pound bird will be done in about 45 minutes. Really. It will also be more evenly browned (all of the skin is exposed to the heat), more evenly cooked, and moister than birds cooked conventionally.
Apple or Pear Crisp
I don't know why anyone would make a pie instead of a crisp. A crisp, most often made with apples but accommodating of almost any fruit, is better textured, better flavored and easier to make. If you choose to use pears instead of apples, be aware that unripe pears are unlikely to become tender in the time it takes the topping to brown. You must begin with pears that have started to soften, or their texture will remain unpleasantly firm.
Chicken Salad With Skordalia
My approach to chicken salad was changed when I traveled to the Middle East and had a chicken salad bound with a distinctive "mayonnaise" that turned out to be a version of skordalia, the Greek dip. Like mayonnaise, skordalia will bind any cold minced meat or fish (and make a good sauce served with hot ones), but, unlike mayonnaise, it contains no egg. The binding "glue" is bread soaked in milk. There are other differences between common mayonnaise and skordalia. The Greek dip is more intensely flavorful -- atop the garlic I like it with a sound dose of strong paprika or mild chili powder and a handful of cilantro leaves -- and it cannot be bought in a jar. Fortunately, assembling a batch takes about five minutes in a food processor. With it, leftover chicken is almost essential, though of course you can cook some especially for the salad.
Cold Soba Noodles With Dipping Sauce
In Japan, where it gets plenty hot in the summer, cold soba noodles, served with a dipping sauce, are a common snack or light meal. Soba are brown noodles, made from wheat and buckwheat, and the sauce is based on dashi, the omnipresent Japanese stock. You would recognize the smell of dashi in an instant, even if you have never knowingly eaten it. It's a brilliant concoction based on kelp, a seaweed, and dried bonito flakes. It is also among the fastest and easiest stocks you can make, and its two main ingredients – which you can buy in any store specializing in Asian foods – keep indefinitely in your pantry. I would encourage you to try making it, though you can also use chicken stock (or instant dashi, which is sold in the same stores).
Basic Corn Chowder
This is chowder at its simplest: corn, onion, potatoes and milk, with a couple of chopped tomatoes and a handful of parsley to add flavor and color. Starting with bacon and finishing with cream makes a richer version of the dish. But you could easily expand its borders by adding curry powder and ginger, sour cream and cilantro. Or when the potato is replaced by rice and the cream with coconut milk, Southeast Asian seasonings can be added to make a chowder that has little in common with the original, save for its intense corn flavor.