How to Cook Everything: Bittman Takes on America's Chefs Review

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(More customer reviews)`How to Cook Everything, Bittman Takes on America's Chefs' by New York Times culinary journalist, Mark Bittman is another step in turning his `How to Cook Everything' into a brand and by raising expectations for what one may find in this book. Bittman certainly raised my expectations high enough to buy it immediately upon seeing the name of the author and the subject.

Contrary to my glib title to this review, this book is much less a real cooking competition between Bittman and famous chefs than it is a `cover story' for a foodie book genre which may have been created by Julia Child late in her PBS career. The underlying structure is that the host, a journalist / cookbook author as with Bittman or Child or a famous chef, as in the case of Jeremiah Tower, visits each `FAMOUS CHEF' in their restaurant kitchens or similar venue and cook some stuff. In the case of Julia Child, the focus was strictly on the cuisine of the visiting fireman. Bittman tweaks the premise by adding his own home cooking dishes to match up with the efforts of the professional. Then, with no judges or time clocks in evidence, each samples the other's dishes.

One of the first revelations in this book is that Bittman admits to not being a very good cook himself. While this is very interesting, it is not surprising, as Jim Villas in his `Between Bites' essay on Craig Claiborne, states that the great New York Times culinary writer was pretty deliberate in the kitchen himself (a kind way of saying `slow'). I believe it is fair to say that this certainly does not mean Bittman or Claiborne don't know food and cooking. It means that they have not spent years cooking the same dishes over and over and they have not spend decades practicing their knife skills to the point where they can reduce an onion to a fine dice in seconds. In contrast, Chris Schlesinger describes Bittman's knife skills with an onion as an exercise in `hacking'.

My anticipation and enthusiasm for the book grew as I started reading about the differences between home and professional cooking. I have seen it said before, but never with such force, that while many restaurant dishes simply cannot be done in the home, the opposite is true as well. There are some dishes that simply cannot be made as well in a restaurant as they can at home. The primary advantage of the restaurant kitchen are the very hot heat sources, either as oven, wok, or grill plus specialized forms of heat such as salamanders and Indian tandoori ovens. Other advantages are the battalion of prep chefs and the access to very high quality ingredients (See the excellent essay on this matter in `Kinkead's Cookbook'). The home cook has the advantage of time. If a dish requires a long cooking time followed by immediate delivery to the dinner table, a restaurant simply cannot make it. All restaurant dishes must be prepped up to the final step, where ingredients sit in preparation to be fired and completed in no more than 20 minutes.

So now I have read the introduction on how Bittman collected his collaborators, starting with old friends such as Daniel Boulud and Chris Schlesinger and ending with long time collaborator Jean-Georges Vongerichten. In between, he visits ten other major culinary stars such as Michel Richard and up and coming luminaries such as Kerry Simon. The anecdotes in this intro have honed my anticipation for the descriptions of the cooking. So now, I get to the section entitled `The Chefs and The Dishes' and am puzzled by tables of dish names by venue and chef. The reason for this section is explained as I turn to page 33 with the title `Starters' and find that all the recipes are arranged by type of dish. I am as deflated as a souffle when the oven door opens too early!

Bittman has raised my expectations of tales of culinary rapport to a high peak, only to dash them on an organization of recipes that totally swims against the main premise of his book. When I reviewed Jeremiah Tower's similar book, I was pleased with his arranging the recipes by type or course, since this improved the value of the book as a conventional reference cookbook. I expected that Bittman's premise would make an organization by chef the best choice, as this would best highlight all the differences between Bittman's home style and the chef's professional style in the four to six dishes the two cooks prepare together. It would also be an effective way to compare, for example, the French classicism of Vongerichten and Richard against the Spanish new wave cooking of Jose Andres. But this was not to be. What made it worse is that `The Chefs and The Dishes' outline did not give page numbers pointing to all the recipes of, for example Daniel Boulud. As I check the publisher, somehow I am not surprised to find that it is Wiley Publishing, the same house that does a slipshod job of editing the CIA books. Never have I more wanted to be a book editor in a position to prevent this mistake. Given my reaction to the book, it seems as if there was no senior editor at Wiley who sat down and looked over the whole project and did not see the weaknesses in the design of the book.

After all that, this is still a very good foodie read, similar to `Kinkead's Cookbook'. Just as Bob Kinkead has thousands of cookbooks, but has never prepared a dish directly from one of these recipes, this is a book you want to read from cover to cover and garner as many insights about techniques as you can. The sidebars and headnotes are full of useful and entertaining information, but the book could have been much better!

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Product Description:

It's a battle of restaurant style vs. homestyle as Mark Bittman takes on the nation's top chefs with accessible versions of some of their favorite dishes
Mark Bittman is famous for the simple, down-to-earth approach to cooking that hundreds of thousands of home cooks know and love from his bestselling How to Cook Everything cookbooks. Now, in this companion to the public television series, he pits his relaxed cooking style against the sophisticated creations of 13 A-list celebrity chefs, such as Jean-Georges Vongerichten in New York, Chris Schlesinger in Boston, and Suzanne Goin in Los Angeles.
The TV series and book offer tantalizing recipes for home cooks who like to keep things simple-or take on a culinary challenge. Readers may find it hard to choose. The battle plays out in the 120 recipes Mark and the chefs created together, each helping but also ribbing the other along the way. In the book, the recipes are grouped in chapters ranging from salads to main dishes to desserts. Each recipe challenge presents a chef's special dish followed by Bittman's simpler interpretation, including Daniel Boulud's Lamb, Four Ways vs. Bittman's Simple Lamb Roast and Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Apple Tart Tartin with Tart Apple Ice Cream vs. Bittman's Skillet Tart Tartin. To capture the lighthearted competition and expert cooking revelations that make the TV series so engaging, the book offers Bittman's behind-the-scenes observations and practical cooking tips for each recipe. During this cooking odyssey, "even I learned something," Bittman says. Rounding out the package are beautiful full-color photographs of finished dishes and action shots from the show.
Mark Bittman (Los Angeles, CA) writes the weekly "Minimalist" column and other features for the New York Times dining section, and is the acclaimed author of the bestselling How to Cook Everything, as well as The Minimalist Cooks at Home, The Minimalist Cooks Dinner, Fish: The Complete Guide to Buying and Cooking, and other books. He has been widely featured in national and regional print and broadcast media, and has made regular appearances on the Today show and NPR's All Things Considered

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