Mark Bittman's quick and easy appetizers

On Bread or Crackers

1 Red peppers and anchovies: Drizzle piquillos or other roasted red peppers with olive oil, and top with a good anchovy fillet. A caper or two on each is not amiss.

2 Top rye flatbread with thin slices of crisp apple and pickled plain or schmaltz herring (not herring in cream sauce).

3 Sear skirt steak to medium-rare, not more than 8 minutes. Cut into chunks 1/2-inch to 1 inch, first with the grain, then against it. Spread bread with coarse mustard and/or butter. Top with steak and coarse salt.

4 Toss high-quality crab meat with minced shallots, a little tarragon or a lot of parsley and/or basil, and enough mayonnaise to bind. Also good on lettuce leaves.

5 Mash together best-quality tuna, minced anchovies, minced garlic, chopped oil-cured olives and olive oil as necessary.

6 New York comfort food: Spread cream cheese or crème fraîche on small bagels or bagel chips; black bread is also terrific. Top with sturgeon, sable or lox.

7 Slice soft goat cheese and brush with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and chopped herbs, then with bread crumbs. Bake at 350 degrees until soft, about 10 minutes, and serve hot.

8 Might not be the new ketchup, but great stuff: purée skinned roasted peppers or piquillos with some of their liquid, salt and olive oil. Serve alone or with other foods — a piece of cheese, even.

9 Top buttered bread with shaved country ham, prosciutto or regular deli ham and bread-and-butter pickles.

10 Chop shrimp fine, then sauté in a minimum of oil, or poach quickly and drain. Mix premade pesto with mayonnaise so that it is gluey. Combine cooled shrimp with sufficient pesto to bind; chill.

11 Tapenade: Combine about 1 pound pitted black olives in food processor with 1/4 cup drained capers, at least 5 anchovies, 2 garlic cloves, black pepper and olive oil as necessary to make a coarse paste. Can also be a dip. Use sparingly; it’s strong.

12 A kind of Moroccan tapenade: As above, but use good green olives with capers; olive-oil-canned tuna (instead of anchovies); garlic, if desired; and cumin.

13 Chop fresh mushrooms. Cook slowly in olive oil with salt and pepper until very soft. Stir in minced garlic and parsley. Cook a few more minutes until garlic mellows. (Especially good if you add reconstituted dried porcini.)

14 Mix together a bit of flour and good paprika. Cut Manchego or similar sheep’s milk cheese into 1/2-inch-thick slices. Dip in flour, then beaten egg, then bread crumbs, and fry quickly to brown on both sides. Drain on paper towels and serve hot.

15 Beef tartare: Carefully pulse good beef in food processor. For each pound, add an egg, a teaspoon dry mustard, a tablespoon Dijon mustard, a tablespoon Worcestershire, Tabasco to taste, 1/2 cup chopped scallions and a touch of minced garlic. Salt and pepper, if necessary. Amazing stuff.

16 Put a thick film of olive oil in a skillet over low heat with lots of thin-sliced garlic. When it sizzles, add shrimp along with pimentón. Raise the heat just enough to get the shrimp going, and cook until it’s pink. Stir in parsley. Spoon a little of the oil onto pieces of bread and top with shrimp.

17 Season cornmeal with lots of chili powder, salt and black pepper. Heat a thick film of neutral oil (or oil mixed with butter) in a skillet. Dredge shucked clams, oysters or chicken breast pieces in the cornmeal and cook about 2 minutes a side, or until crisp. Serve on bread with mayonnaise, or sprinkle with lemon or lime juice and serve on toothpicks. It’s almost convenience food when prepared with shucked mollusks.

via |http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/dining/19mini.html?ref=dining

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Want more of The Minimalist?
Then try our Great Chefs page at Recipes.it or enjoy one of his best-sellers:


The Minimalist Cooks Dinner: More than 100 Recipes for Fast Weeknight Meals and Casual Entertaining
Back with another splendid collection, America’s most popular cooking authority and author of How to Cook Everything, presents more than 100 fast, sophisticated main courses for home cooks of every skill level.

The Minimalist Cooks Dinner showcases Mark Bittman’s signature ease and imagination, and focuses on center-of-the-plate main dishes. And, in this new volume, he also provides recipes for classic, versatile side dishes as well as recommendations for wine and food pairings. With a majority of its main dish recipes taking less than thirty minutes to prepare, this is truly the book every busy cook has been waiting for. Every recipe in The Minimalist Cooks Dinner is big on flavor, drawing on the global pantry and international repertoire that sets Bittman apart.

This inventive collection offers a refreshing new take on standards, along with ideas that will inspire both novices and experienced home cooks to branch out, making it the perfect solution for weeknight after-work meals or elegant weekend dinner parties. From Steamed Chicken Breasts with Scallion-Ginger Sauce to Korean-Style Beef Wrapped in Lettuce Leaves to Roast Fish with Meat Sauce, Bittman banishes the ordinary with an exciting range of choices. Also covering hearty pasta dishes, steaks, pork, veal, lamb, chicken, and a wide assortment of seafood, The Minimalist Cooks Dinner is the answer when you’re looking for “satisfying dishes with a minimum of effort.”

About the Author: Mark Bittman is the creator and author of the popular weekly New York Times column “The Minimalist,” and a frequent contributor to the newspaper’s Dining InDining Out section. His previous books include The Minimalist Cooks at Home (winner of an IACP Award), How to Cook Everything (a four-time award winner, with more than 400,000 copies in print), Fish (winner of an IACPJulia Child Cookbook Award) and, with Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Jean-Georges: Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef (winner of a James Beard Award) and Simple to Spectacular. He lives in Connecticut.
Buy this book at Barnes & Noble


How to Cook Everything : The Basics (Simple Recipes Anyone Can Cook)
How to Cook Everything: The Basics gives you essential recipes and easy-to-follow guidance to help you cook with confidence. Mark Bittman, the bestselling, award-winning author of How to Cook Everything, shows you how to make a good burger or delicious pasta for everyday meals as well as chicken soup on a cold day, lasagne because you love it, and prime rib for company. Not only will you make some of the best food you’ve ever eaten, you’ll save money and eat more healthfully, too.

Anyone can cook

* Simple, satisfying recipes with easy-to-follow directions
* Tips to help you shop for, prepare, and cook the recipes
* Recipe variations and lists of ideas to adapt dishes to your taste
* Step-by-step illustrations for tricky techniques like mincing garlic

Simple. Straightforward.
Just what you need to cook well.

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Mark Bittman's Quick and Easy Recipes from the New York Times : Featuring 350 Recipes from the Author of how to Cook Everything and the Best Recipes in the World
Mark Bittman’s New York Times column, “The Minimalist,” is one of the most frequently clipped parts of the paper’s Dining section. For Bittman’s millions of fans who regularly pore over their clippings, here is reason to rejoice: A host of Bittman’s wonderfully delicious and easy recipes, 350 in all, are now available in a single paperback.
In sections that cover everything from appetizers, soups, and sauces to meats, vegetables, side dishes, and desserts, Mark Bittman’s Quick and Easy Recipes from The New York Times showcases the elegant and flexible cooking style for which Bittman is famous, as well as his deep appreciation for fresh ingredients prepared with minimal fuss. Readers will find tantalizing recipes from all over, each requiring little more than basic techniques and a handful of ingredients. Cold Tomato Soup with Rosemary, Parmesan Cups with Orzo Risotto, Slow-Cooked Ribs, Pumpkin Panna Cotta—the dishes here are perfect for simple weeknight family meals or stress-free entertaining.
Certain to appeal to anyone—from novices to experienced cooks—who wants to whip up a sophisticated and delicious meal easily, this is a collection to savor, and one destined to become a kitchen classic.
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The Best Recipes in the World: More than 1,000 International Dishes to Cook at Home
In this highly ambitious and accomplished work, which spans the globe, Mark Bittman gathers the best recipes that people cook every day on every continent in the world. And when he brings his immensely popular no-frills approach to dishes that might previously have been considered “exotic,” cooks gladly follow where they once feared to tread.

Bittman, in more than one thousand recipes, shows American cooks that there are so many other places besides Italy or France to turn to for inspiration. Asian food now rivals European cuisine’s popularity, and this book reflects that: it’s the first to give equal emphasis to European and Asian cuisine, and the easy-to-follow recipes for such favorites as Stir-Fried Vegetables with Nam Pla from Vietnam, Pad Thai from Thailand, Salmon Teriyaki from Japan, Black Bean and Garlic Spareribs from China, and Tandoori Chicken from India will be a hit with home cooks looking to add exciting new tastes and cosmopolitan flair to their everyday cooking. In addition, other less-familiar cuisines such as Turkish, Spanish, and Mexican are also explored in depth.


Shop locally, cook globally–Mark Bittman makes it so easy:

• Many recipes can be made ahead or prepared in under thirty minutes

• More than one hundred line drawings

• Sidebars and instructional drawings make unfamiliar techniques a snap

• 52 international menus, information on ingredients, and much more make this an essential addition to any cook’s shelf


The Best Recipes in the World is destined to be a classic that will change the way Americans think about everyday food.It’s simply like no other cookbook in the world.

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