And so it begins...

So what does it mean to take a bite out of Bittman? Well, it's pretty simple – each week for the next year (April 2009-March 2010), I will make Mark Bittman's Minimalist recipe from the Wednesday food section of the NY Times and write about it here. I think that’s a pretty simple goal for my first real blog.

And why did I decide to do this? Well, I like to cook and bake, but somehow I’ve gotten out of the habit of spending real time in the kitchen. Bittman's How To Cook Everything is my go-to book when I need a basic recipe or have a new ingredient that I'd like to try out, and when I read the Times food section most weeks, I see the Bittman recipe and think "that looks good" or "that sounds easy" or "I've never used [insert new ingredient here]." But do I make the recipe? 97 times out of a hundred, the answer is a regretful no. From this point forward, I have no excuse for not making the recipe. This blog is my commitment to do it. And hopefully, by the end of the year, I'll have built up my cooking creativity and added a few new "go to" recipes to my repertoire.

I know that lots of foodies out in the blogosphere have little respect for Bittman, putting him one small step above Rachel Ray on the culinary ladder. But I think they're wrong. It's true that Mark uses fairly simple techniques and ingredients, but he isn't trying to make culinary innovations – I think he's trying to get other people to make a meal in their own kitchens and to start to recognize the value of techniques and ingredients as the building blocks of cooking. And I think he succeeds in this...or at least I hope to prove that he does.

Finally, some initial caveats. When Bittman gets a week off (i.e., he has no recipe or food article in the printed edition of the Times – his Bitten blog is a whole other universe), I get a week off. I may not blog that week or perhaps I'll write about something non-Bittman. When he does one of his classic "[insert # here] easy appetizers/summer meals/side dishes/etc." articles, I will make at least one of the entries and will pick one that uses an ingredient or technique I've never used before. Although I'm sure I'll find the need for a few more caveats as this experiment continues (admission: I'm a lawyer that also has an advanced science degree), that's all I could think of for now.

Okay, time to cook…or at least time to look at the April 1^st recipe and figure out what (if anything) I need to get from the grocery store in order to starting cooking.