Cookbook trends come and go, but one theme never falls out of fashion: the promise of a plan for getting healthy, delicious meals on the table without a hassle.
It’s a crowded genre, heavier on hype than help. But Mark Bittman has proven himself a reliable purveyor of solutions that cut through the clutter. His streamlined approach to savvy cooking fueled his popular New York Times column, “The Minimalist,” more than two decades ago, along with the steady stream of bestselling books, TV shows, websites, and podcasts that have followed.
“Putting together a cookbook about fast cooking is slow,” he acknowledges in “How to Cook Everything Fast: Great Food in 30 Minutes or Less” (Harvest, $40), a newly revised, updated and gorgeously photographed follow-up to its 2014 black-and-white predecessor.
It’s easy to understand why, beginning with the handy diagram on the front inside cover illustrating how to set up a kitchen for speed. A section of general time-saving tips for shopping, prepping, cooking, and cleaning lays out the game plan.
Recipes covering every meal situation have been studiously engineered to maximize every moment in the kitchen. Prep steps appear in blue, and cooking directions in black, signaling when you can prep an ingredient during inactive cooking time. A recipe for Pasta with Brussels Sprouts, Chicken, and Blue Cheese, for example, advises trimming and halving the vegetables and cutting the chicken in bite-size pieces while waiting for the water to come to a boil.
Making use of downtime in this way can save you time in the long run if you’re fairly swift with a knife. But if you’d rather get a head start with the chopping, you can easily check off the “blue” steps first and use those idle moments however you like.
Whichever method you choose, you should feel relaxed and unstressed by the time you sit down to Seared Pork Chops with Apples and Onions, Gooey Stovetop Lasagna, Stir-Fried Curried Chickpeas with Two-Tone Potatoes, or any of the hundreds of other possibilities offered in these pages.
All support Bittman’s original thesis: For a lifetime of nourishment without stress, think minimal.
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
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