Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Mark Bittman
Started reading
August 18, 2023
LARGE SKILLET WITH A LID 12 inches. Your go-to pan, for everything from pancakes to stir-fries. Cast iron and stainless steel are my first choices. (You’ve got to “season” cast iron first: Wash and dry it well, then smear the inside with vegetable oil. Put the pan in a 350°F oven to heat for 1 hour; turn the oven off and let it cool; repeat whenever the pan looks dry.) Buy a second large skillet that’s nonstick if you want to try using less oil than called for in the recipes. (But you’re limited in how you can use it since there is some concern about the safety of heating a dry nonstick pan
...more
Making breakfast will instantly improve your cooking skills and your eating habits. A simple scrambled egg teaches you how to control the heat under a skillet and anticipate and recognize doneness. Every time you cut up a piece of fruit you practice knife handling by peeling, trimming, and slicing. Learn to measure and mix simple batters with an easy batch of pancakes. These are confidence-building recipes you can cook for yourself or for others, without the pressure of getting a lot of food on the table at the same time.
Yum. Bacon. Sausage. Ham. Here’s what to do with them:
8/26/23 - Cooked two sausages to go with my two fried eggs. (Though I was a little overzealous and mildly burned the sausages. Practice makes perfect.)
Oatmeal or Other Hot Cereal
9/6/23 - Delicious! With cinnamon, honey, and raisins, a flavorful feast for the senses! I'm throwing out my breakfast cereal! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st21dIMaGMs
Vanilla-Peach Smoothie Why not make a different flavor every day?
8/31/23 - Delicious! The vanilla really comes through even with a tiny amount of extract.
Mango-Ginger Smoothie: 2 cups mango, 1 frozen banana, 1 cup white grape juice, and toss 2 thin slices of peeled fresh ginger into the blender.
9/25/23 - A refreshing shift from my daily vanilla-peach. Surprisingly, mangoes are much cheaper than peaches (a peach is $4 while a mango is $2, and a mango is good for 2 smoothies while a peach is good for one). But the peach-vanilla smoothies are much easier to prepare (no peeling required). I may stick with the mango for a while. The ginger wakes me up!
Scrambled Eggs
8/18/23 - A delicious introduction! (I used 2 eggs in a small skillet for supper.)
Fried Eggs Almost as delicate as poached eggs—minus the fuss—and perfect in all the same dishes.
8/19/23 - Fried one and added it to a sandwich comprising three turkey slices, two tomatoes, lettuce, mustard, and shredded cheese. This may become a daily habit.
Cheese Omelet The filling and folding are easy, and in 15 minutes you’ve got a whole meal.
8/29/23 - Probably the first legitimate meal I've ever cooked (don't laugh). Delicious!
Cooked and chopped mushrooms, onion, spinach, or simply cooked leftover vegetables, ½ to 1 cup
9/23/23 - Added some mushrooms and spinach to my daily omelet. Can never go back to just egg and cheese now. (I used to spend $20 a pop on omelets as a weekly treat from IHOP. Now I can make them fresh daily for a tenth of the price!)
Pancakes
11/25/24 - This turned out great! I thought there was no way a mess of flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, eggs would become usable batter, but it pretty much immediately did. These are so thick. Real cakes, not thin ones like the frozen ones sold in stores. Pairing it with Real Grade A dark maple syrup also made it all feel so much more authentic. Bittman's note about the second batch coming out better was right. Made 6, ate 4, and saved 2 for breakfast tomorrow.
Sweet Potato Fritters
9/10/23 - Bought a sweet potato, but noped out of this recipe when I realized how long grating it by hand would take. Instead peeled it, chopped it, and boiled it for a tasty, very filling result!
Miso Soup
10/30/24 - An inaugural soup to ease my way. It came out decently (in part because it's basically instant). But it's kind of boring. I have a few cups saved, but probably won't finish them. I can imagine myself being excited by this sort of thing at a Japanese restaurant in the past, so I'm a little amused. This book continues to ruin eating out for me. Next step is lentil soup, I guess.
Pasta with Garlic and Oil
10/5/24 - I don't eat enough carbs, so the occasional whole-grain pasta seemed like a good way to fix that. This was my first foray into using my stove's quick boil burner and to multi-burner cooking for the sauce. I accidentally poured in the full pound of pasta instead of the intended half, so I wound up with less sauce than would be ideal. I also undercooked the sauce because I wasn't paying enough attention to it in favor of the pasta. End result tasted good. I've always found Italian restaurants overpriced and underwhelming, so it's good that I don't need to eat at them any more.
Pasta with Eggs and Cheese
10/16/24 - Turned out great! It takes around 20 minutes for 2 gallons water to boil on my stove, and the timing mostly worked out with the egg/cheese sauce. Accidentally added the bacon bits too early so they wound up buried in the pasta, but that's fine. Ended up with some leftovers to munch on off-hand and made good use of some takeout containers I bought.
Pasta with Tomato Sauce
10/22/24 - Prepared mostly as prep for hopefully making some lasagna down the line. Turned out well, but I can never chop my onions as finely as Bittman does, so I had big pieces of onion in the final sauce mixture. Big mistake was that I bought regular cans of tomatoes instead of no salt added (so I have to throw away most of the product instead of keeping leftovers, or I might get sick from sodium overload). Also didn't fully drain pasta and added too much cooking water to final mix. All in all, a worthwhile experiment. The multi-burner cooking is always enjoyable. But on the whole, I think I prefer the pasta with eggs and cheese to this.
Steamed Asparagus
10/24/24 - Delicious. This turned out quite well. I made the mistake of cutting off the rubber band around the asparagus, so around half the stalks wound up boiled instead of steamed. But I still wolfed down a pound of asparagus like it was nothing. Definitely a regular go-to along with the corn.
Stir-Fried Cabbage with Ginger
10/1/24 - Nearly effortless! I suppose my cooking skills have improved. Left me feeling not totally filled. Perhaps this is meant to be paired with something heartier. Perhaps some meat.
Caramelized Onions
10/12/24 - These turned out quite well! I think I used too little heat at first, so had to up it a bit and stew for 20 more minutes. End result tasted like restaurant fare. Threw them onto an omelet after and it was better for it. May start making these more often.
Mashed Potatoes
11/19/24 - Delicious! This turned out great. Added some garlic and grated parmesan. Brings back memories of Thanksgiving vacations spent on-campus during college where they offered a special lunch to the few of us still around. In hindsight, what a waste of time my whole education was, hahaha.
Corn on the Cob with Chile Butter
10/14/24 - Delicious food for practically zero effort. I remember my father used to laboriously roast corn cobs over a gas stove for us when I was a kid. Apparently all he had to do was steam them in a stockpot. I don't think I minced the jalapeno enough, though, so ended up having to apply it manually before biting down. But otherwise, wow! Cooked 4 cobs, ate 2, and refrigerating 2 for later.
Grilled or Broiled Steak
8/30/24 - Sorry for such a long break, gang. Been eating the same few meals from this cookbook for a year now. Have some free time for the first time in decades, so decided to try my hand at red meat this time around by pan-frying a ribeye. Attempt turned out great! I mildly screwed up by cooking directly from the fridge instead of warming it to room temperature first, but a few more minutes of cooking seems to have made up for it. Ate half and saving half for tomorrow. Delicious!
The Burger
10/14/24 - Pan-cooked using a $5 high-end patty I bought from Black Angus Steakhouse. By far the best burger I've ever tasted. Also the healthiest and cheapest. Think it turned out a bit too much on the rare side, though. Very bloody affair. Also added some cooked bacon bits, a tomato slice, a large onion slice, some lettuce, and whole wheat buns. Delicious!
Pork Stir-Fry with Greens Far better—and even faster—than any takeout.
9/7/24 - I've been ordered weekly pork souvlaki and baklava from Nick the Greek for months now at $40 a pop. This recipe seemed like a tempting way to get my red meat fix and also save two thousand a year (so I can put that cash into traveling). Turned out surprisingly similar to Nick the Greek (and probably healthier too, since I'm using avocado oil), though I definitely overcooked it, since my meat thermometer read 165 degrees (5 above well-done/dry). Accidentally put in all the oil at the start instead of just half, which might have contributed. Almost as interesting as the meal are the boning knife, food scale, and meat thermometer I bought and used. You can tell I watch too much TV because the first two made me think of serial killers and cooking meth instead of the actually pretty mundane act of cooking pork.
Sausage and Peppers
9/29/24 - Delicious! Simmering on medium for half an hour is a new experience for me. Worked out great. I've cooked around ~1500 calories worth of sausage here (5 links). Will eat two and then save the remainder for the future (or maybe just toss them). This is in fact a straight-up family-sized meal for around 10 bucks in ingredients. Wow!
Stir-Fried Chicken with Broccoli
10/11/23 - After around a month living off the breakfast section of this book, ventured out to this simplest of dinners and had my mind blown. Restaurant-quality food is so easy to achieve. Flavors I thought were unique turn out to just be soy sauce, oil, and water boiled together. Next time I make this, I'm adding mushrooms. Maybe some cooking wine. Infinite possibilities indeed!!!
Fried Chicken
1/6/25 - This tasted amazing. I spent most of 2020-22 running daily to a local pizza place for fried wings. A flavored, rather small 5-piece cost me 6 bucks, then I'd give a tip of 10 bucks on top of that. Similarly I'd spend 20-30 dollars a pop ordering take-out from Popeye's or Chick-Fil-A.
Turns out all that was totally unnecessary and unhealthy. Instead of poisoning myself with seed oils and F-grade meat, I can use avocado oil and high-quality chicken for a much healthier, heartier meal at home.
The avocado oil is probably the most expensive part. It costs around 8 dollars for enough to fry chicken. But then I can fry 2 pounds of chicken (costing 5 bucks) which is enough for 2 meals. So that's $6.50 per meal for more and better food.
Really a steal, and I also feel pretty hardcore frying chicken on my stove. I want to get into Indian cooking (with high-quality ghee instead of the seed oils used in American Indian restaurants and the gutter oil used in India/China), and I suspect this was a great introduction.
Shrimp Scampi
6/3/25 - Turned out wonderfully. My first foray into seafood! As usual, I had to cook at higher heat for a few minutes longer. I suspect my stove is less powerful than Bittman's. Seafood in restaurants is definitely very overpriced.
Grilled Cheese Sandwich
10/1/24 - Made this for breakfast because I realized I had the ingredients lying around. Watching butter melt was quite fun, though I feel like one side ended up much browner than the other because it soaked up all the butter. I feel like Elmer Fudd - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRonzIW9T5U
Beef Tacos
3/5/25 - Tried this on a lark after having an impromptu taco al pastor at a nearby Mexican restaurant after my monthly haircut. Subbed in pork for beef in keeping with my inspiration, was not disappointed. Made 12, chowed down on 3, refrigerating 9 to feast on for the next few days. This would have cost me $50+ at the restaurant, but is probably $10 in ingredients to make at home healthier. Yet another piece of restaurant fare demystified!
Brownies
12/21/24 - Whipped this up probably because of a subconscious festive mood. Very easy, very tasty. It's nice making desserts from scratch so I know exactly what I'm putting in my body.
