Off-campus living has its perks; among them, the opportunity to try out the adult lifestyle while still playing flip cup on the dining room table. This year, my beautiful kitchen and dwindling bank account led to my newest project: learning to cook. I needed something to inspire and organize me, and it arrived, courtesy of my encouraging father.
How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman ($14.93, Amazon), aims to do it all, and it delivers. In almost a thousand pages, Bittman not only taught me how to make the 1,500 recipes included, but also how to cook on my own, to improvise and to experiment.
The encyclopedic volume opens with the words, "Anyone can cook, and most everyone should," offering a primer on safety, equipment and technique. Each chapter presents further instructions, short yet elegant essays on purchasing and preparation. The recipes themselves are astonishingly simple, impressive without being imposing. Bittman then suggests how to modify them: basic sautéed chicken cutlets easily become sesame-coated chicken cutlets or chicken parmigiana. The recipes span continents and cultures, ranging from rudimentary to refined. The language is straightforward, and a detailed glossary elucidates the meaning of any unfamiliar jargon.
Throughout the book, Bittman offers you confidence. He starts with small tutorials, like detailed sketches on how to peel shrimp, and then moves to the basic cooking lessons. He then combines these acquired skills to more complex recipes, such as shrimp scampi. It's neither a glossy nor flashy book; there are no illustrations beyond some rough drawings. But it is an accessible bible, both for a beginning cook like myself and for seasoned veterans like my parents, serving as a reference, a template and a springboard. And it just may make your roommates forgive you for that time you forgot to clean up the spilled beer.
