NYTimes: Marc Bittman says you don't really need the expensive kitchen stuff

I like Bittman's original How to Cook Everything approach because it frees the cook from the recipe -- you have the power to make it however you want, you're not gonna fuck it up, go ahead, try different things. That's not ego-oriented food advice. I guess I really dislike ego-oriented food writing -- make my recipe my way, etc. It's like insisting on a brand name -- I just find it gross.

i turn to "how to cook everything" when i need proportions for a pancake recipe or something--he's good at sort of calmly delineating the basic shit that needs to get done to realize a given dish.

it's when bittman tries to go ottolenghi that it all goes wrong.

bon appetit is the worst

at least you can get the occasional good recipe out of Cooking Light. Bon Appetit's not even a decent bin liner.

maybe it's yelp fallout but even good food writers i'm starting to find faintly obnoxious

otm

i can't even really roll/w beloved ol jonathan gold much anymore, idk why.

but can you bun?

That's why I liked Old Bittman -- he was like "you can do this!", the end. No weight loss/"health" bs, no rhapsodizing over olives from an old Lebanese woman's backyard, just unfussy food-making and -eating.

rhapsodizing over olives from an old Lebanese woman's backyard

irl lols @ this

i think bittman is coming to terms with his own mortality; he's spent a lifetime eating well and eating richly. he's worried. he's trying to unwind the odometer.

I just wish he would keep it to himself. Proselytizing is gross even if his recipes are good. As I said before, imo naming and selling your own diet is what assholes do (among other things).

i've got a new diet i'm calling "the leong game", which involves kale, spinach, and tomato juice smoothies at every meal. $19.99 for the recipe and a free diet calendar.

the vegemite solution: eat healthy snacks during the day and then pig out on icecream because you had a crappy day at work

Leong Gamers gather fortnightly to exchange algae cultures and shame each other for eating > 6 almonds.

almond unen-joy

oh hey like every issue bon appetit has a feature on some restaurant in some stupidly far-flung part of the world (well, far-flung if you are american). like, some place in darkest fucking sweden or, this month, some dude cooking with flowers in a strip mall outside of melbourne. every one of these articles is a hilarious and transparently desperate bid to "discover" the next rene redzepi or adria or whoever.

i read this and then i go lie down and read elizabeth david until sanity returns.

mark bittman says
who the hell cares what mark bittman says anymore?
that's what i want to know at this point

i bought some ocean perch at the store yesterday with the intention of doing something lemon-buttery with garlic and dill, and i consulted his book Fish (that's the kind of book title I appreciate), which confirmed what i thought i should do and gave me a few other ideas for next time i want to eat this (very delicious, inexpensive, and tender) fish. It didn't have a stupid name and claim to elongate my life. It just told me how to make the fish in a variety of ways. RIP that mark bittman :(

can you give me an example of the new bittman article

i mean, an article written by the new bittman

he is selling a diet book with a special name that he claims is "his" diet -- isn't that enough?

doesn't really raise any red flags for me

yeah see i guess i feel that's gross -- i can stand personal branding! it grosses me out.

UGH
i meant can't
my outrage (i'm not really that outraged) has made me typo crazy

i guess because i believe in his general philosophies w/r/t food i don't mind that he's building his personal brand

i agree with him and i still think it's gross
he has become a pontificator, and i preferred him as an educator. i realize it's a fine line, but still somehow in my mind he has crossed it

that's probably true but i think the enemies on the other side of the line (corporate food laboratories and taste labs and advertising and etc. etc. etc.) are so numerous, that....

you're totally right -- i realize not everyone would feel the same way
cooking is a basic life skill, imo, and treating it like a program/commodifying it is kind of antithetical to that
again, imo
what could a businessman ever want more, etc. i'm a product of my times! it's inescapable.

How to Cook Everything was the first cookbook that made me feel like I could actually succeed at cooking, and it opened me up to a lot of foods -- it's like the ipad/iphone of cooking in terms of user-friendliness compared to most of the other available stuff, at least when it came out.

I mean, it's not like Julia Child wasn't heavy into personal branding, there just wasn't that term for it yet.

Oh hell no you are not equating MB and JC!

Rachel Ray or Paula Deen, yes. But not Julia Child.

I hate Bittman too.

I'm trying to imagine Julia Child or James Beard "branding" stuff and failing. Links required for proof. The only similar thing I recall from that era is Graham Kerr's spurtle.

i do kind of avoid reading bittman's stuff now that he's less of a cooking writer. not having those weekly minimalist columns let him wander too far into dr. oz land. i still like his videos when he does them.

His minimalist stuff is great; the title of his new "work" has made him my enemy 4evah

Like I will not even type it out here because it makes me spit.

I'm trying to imagine Julia Child or James Beard "branding" stuff and failing. Links required for proof. The only similar thing I recall from that era is Graham Kerr's spurtle.

― Jaq, Monday, May 13, 2013 11:20 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it seems kind of naive to think that a chef with a long-running television series and a number of bestselling cookbooks with her name directly in the title is not engaging in branding

A cookbook or tv show is not a line of cookware, patented spices, tableware, appliances, or "must-have" utensils.

Yeah but the ". . . lose weight in X days" uuuuuuugh fuck that dude.

A cookbook or tv show is not a line of cookware, patented spices, tableware, appliances, or "must-have" utensils.

― Jaq, Monday, May 13, 2013 11:59 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Bittman has these things?

The Dr. Oz relationship is omg u dead to me dood

Telling me how to cook something is so very different from telling me what to eat. I'll stick with Harold McGee for now.

It's only a matter of time before Bittman has a line of supplements.

Or he jumps on to homeopathy.

i'd like to know why no one (no public figure at least) seems to be satisfied/gratified by simply teaching people how to cook
that's what he used to do really well, and in a way that wasn't insulting
i no longer care what he says about anything because he's a pontificating weight loss salesman instead of a teacher

Mark Bittman's fearmongering is starting to remind me of Glenn Beck -- what's wrong with this guy?

He's the worst and I hate myself every time I'm baited into clicking one of his articles.

What now? I haven't been paying attention.

Chicken. Fucking chicken.

i.e. DON'T EAT IT U ASKING FOR DEATH