Bittman's "How to Cook Everything"

[prasantrin]

I use his recipe for Bolognese sauce all the time, and the fresh tomato sauce, too. Other than the bechamel recipe (I keep forgetting proportions...), that's all I've really tried, and I've had the book for years...I guess it's time to experiment more!

[Pontormo]

I really love this book, I use it for both referencing and cooking.

MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITES:

...No Holds Barred Clam or Fish Chowder, I make it with cod...

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Thanks for the inspiration for something to do with a sizeable chunk of cod in the freezer.

This is one of the four "basic" "American" cookbooks I own; I include Madison's heftiest vegetarian book, Craig Claiborne and James Beard. I've used it a lot. First edition has a lot of errors that should have been caught by copy editors and big red splotches from a sloppy printing jobs. These have been corrected in more recent printings by Bittman's current publisher.

I agree with many of the assessments. It's not meant to wow you, but update the notion of an all-purpose cookbook from the era of Craig Claiborne, especially. The author is uncanny in deciding which ingredients or types of dishes were missing in publications of the 70s & 80s and which had to go. There have been only a few times in which I've turned to the book and not found guidelines for cooking something I brought back from a shopping trip.

I'd be interested in knowing if anyone owns and uses the author's own complementary book that nods to multi-culturalism and--I am guessing--streamlines dishes from a wide range of international cuisines.

Two recipes that haven't been mentioned that I really like are the stir-fried beef with onions and the fettuccine with spinach.

Instructions for making different versions of cornbread are good and recipes for chili and clafouti are easy to adapt to personal tastes or preferred ingredients.

Only disaster I've had is the cobbler. Yuck.

[Live It Up]

I never would have bought this cookbook for myself, but I received it as a gift and I use it all the time. Mostly I use it as a reference or for baking. I'm sure that I have made savory recipes from it, but I can't actually remember any of them right now. My favorite thing about the book, though, is that he builds variations into most of his recipes. I make a combination of 2 variations on his basic muffin recipe to come up with sour cream coffee cake muffins and they are amazing. I wish I had the book here because I am completely blanking on anything else that I've cooked from it, but I know I have 'cause my copy is all stained and worn.

[Basilgirl]

Pork chops with wine, corn fritters

[phatj]

This was the only cookbook I owned for a few years. I rarely open it any more, but once in a while I do for ideas.

My recipes for beef stew, leg of lamb and onion soup evolved from Bittman's.

[nakji]

I liked the brownies in this book, but then, I like my brownies fudgy, and I used the best chocolate I could find. It does yield a small batch - just perfect for my house, where it's up to me to finish the pan.

I really like the cross referencing and lists in this book, which I think are the killer app. "20 dishes that are good at room temperature" - etc. I don't own Joy of Cooking, or similar, so this is a good "basic" book for me.

I might take it down to the photocopy shops and have it rebound with a spiral binding, though.

[markemorse]

I also received this as a gift and probably wouldn't have bought it for myself b/c (as mentioned previously) it's not a tremendously sexy book. We do use it, mostly as a reference for cooking times, but there is at least one great recipe: Gabrielle's Lemon Squares (the link is from the HTCE website). My wife thinks she added a bit more lemon juice, but other than that they were amazing. There's also a nice lemon cheesecake recipe that worked out perfectly.

mark

Edited March 22, 2007 by markemorse (log)

[chuchelo]

I'm with those who usually use it as a reference and idea book. Love all the sidebars. That said, the last recipe I tried was for cornbread and it was, err, odd.

[prasantrin]

Tonight I made pita bread and bagels from the book. I really like the pita bread--I was a bit worried because my dough didn't look like it had risen much, but I went ahead. It's very tasty pita bread. My bagels are a touch overcooked, and I need to work on my bagel shaping technique, but I quite like them. They're far better than what Costco in Japan tries to pass off as bagels (or other Japanese bagel shops, for that matter).

I also made some no-knead bread--not from the book, and from Jim Lahey, but Mark Bittman helped bring it to the world's attention.

[nakji]

Today I made the double-mustard potato salad from this book, for a barbecue I'm going to. It's amazing! And since my husband and I are of two minds about how we like our mustard (I like standard dijon; he likes grainy) we'll always have the ingredients on hand. I think it'll go with sausages quite well, it's so tart.