The Minimalist Cooks at Home: Recipes That Give You More Flavor from Fewer Ingredients in Less Time
Mark Bittman'sNew York Timescolumn, "The Minimalist," is a much-consulted source for easy but polished recipes.The Minimalist Cooks at Homefeatures  these less-is-more recipes plus others never before published--formulas that  require a minimum of technique and/or ingredients. Bittman's dishes draw on  the world's cuisines and, taken together, represent what might be called a  new kind of home cooking. Anyone seeking delicious everyday food that's quick  to put on the table yet satisfies the demands of modern palates should embrace the book.  In succinct chapters that cover the major dish categories, salads through  desserts, Bittman offers fare like Roast Cod with Tangerine Sauce, Chicken  Under a Brick, Real Paella, and 15-Minute Fruit Gratin. These approachable,  flexible dishes should enter the repertoire of cooks at all skill levels, as  well as please those they feed. Bittman also includes recipes that  illustrate a particular cooking technique or sequence; his Creamy Broccoli  Soup, for example, presents a formula--three parts liquid, two parts  vegetable, one part dairy--that can be applied widely to create new dishes  instinctively. Cooking lessons like these, plus shortcuts and multiple  suggestions for flavorful variations, make the book particularly useful. With  photos that illustrate a number of the techniques, and recipe notes that  further explore dish anatomy, the book delivers on its promise to provide  strategies for good eating with little fuss.--Arthur Boehm