Mind Over Matters

Mark Bittman's The Food Matters Cookbook

by Drew Lazor

"You'll be amazed how efficiently meals come together when you free yourself from the American convention of putting meat at the center of the plate with a starch and a vegetable on the side," writes New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman in his Food Matters Cookbook (Simon & Schuster, Sept. 21), the hefty companion tome to his 2008 best-seller. Such advice falls in lockstep with the wizened writer's endlessly echoed creed — that if one values both personal health and the health of the planet, he should consume as much plant matter as possible, "square meal" ideal be damned

It's sound thinking, dissected in great scientific and philosophical detail in Food Matters. But as a stuck-in-his-unhealthy-ways, "unwilling" eater — which Bittman himself was before he permanently changed his lifestyle — it's always left me cranky. Maybe you feel the same way: If I want beef and pork fat on a bun, you're goddamn right I'm gonna get beef and pork fat on a bun. Is it really possible for me, stubborn, scowling omnivore, to change what I like, how I eat, how I live? Stop telling me what to make for dinner, Bittman!

Drew Lazor

Once I actually dropped my grease-stained gloves long enough to cook a few of the 500 recipes in the writer's latest, though, I realized that Bittman's suggestions are not violations of my constitutional bacon-eating rights, but rather easy ways to inch toward preventing a massive coronary. I'm not going to become a leafy-green guru overnight, but using this book once a week will get me on my way.

The exhaustive Food Matters Cookbook is broken down into nontraditional, info-packed chapters. There are no beef, seafood or chicken sections — rather, you're left with starting points like salads, grains, veggies and soups. It's not a vegetarian cookbook. Meat and fish have their places here, worked into recipes like chili chicken chilaquiles and a Hoppin' John variation that highlights black-eyed peas over smoked ham. Bittman is true to his Minimalist reputation throughout, never dressing up instructions when a staccato (and maybe dryly funny) sentence will do.

Drew Lazor

The crystal-clear recipes I selected for my most recent dinner — a Provencal-style vegetable soup, each flavor-packed spoonful heaped with chicken stock-stewed hunks of zucchini, eggplant, bell pepper and black olive; and wine-braised Swiss chard, flavored with mashed anchovies and skillet-toasted almonds — left me more than satisfied. More impressively, my attempts turned out so well that I'm eager to make a even bigger dent in Bittman's 600-plus-page resource, which has claimed its rightful place on my kitchen shelf next to two cookbooks with raw steaks on their covers.

(drew.lazor@citypaper.net)