How to Cook Everything

How to Cook Everything: The Basics - All You Need to Make Great Food
by Mark Bittman [641.55 Bit]

The simple, clean design of this general purpose cookbook caught my eye on our "new materials" display recently, so I decided to give it a browse. This is a tremendously useful book! Bittman is the author of numerous cookbooks, and a food writer for the New York Times, but in glancing at some of his other publications, I'd havet to say I like this guide the best. The first 40 pages are filled with the essentials of setting up your kitchen, picking your cookware - tools, containers, etc., how to affect certain types of common "cuts", how to properly "measure" ingredients, and what you need to know about different cooking methods - from braising to deep frying, broiling to sauteing. After that, the remaining 400+ pages are broken down into broad categories -- Breakfast, Appetizers and Snacks, Soups and Stews, Vegetables and Beans, Meat, Seafood, Desserts and more. In each section, dozens of standard dishes are featured, with each dish given two facing pages in the book. Each dish has simple (though sometimes very detailed) step-by-step instructions for how to create the dish, with perfectly-chosen photos to illustrate various steps in the process. This book could serve as the central "basic" cookbook for anyone just getting started, particularly college students or people moving into a home with a decent kitchen for the first time. As someone who would like to spend more time cooking if I could, I really admired the combination of clear text and helpful photographs. I highly recommend this book! -- recommended by Scott C. - Bennett Martin Public Library

[ official Mark Bittman web site ]

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