Mizrahi Needs a Cookbook?

Everyone reviewed Mark Bittman’s landmark How to Cook Everything — even fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, who swallowed the bait in the title, writing that the cookbook is the only one you need. (We suspect he might not even need this one, however.) Professional chefs also applauded Bittman up and down, even ones with their own books to sell, like Bobby Flay, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and Mollie Katzen. It led us to surmise: This must be a pretty great cookbook. Maybe it’s time to open our copy, which has been waiting patiently for us to buy a pot for the past year. Bittman first released Everything a decade ago, and last October the 1,000-page monster was “completely revised,” which sounds like an admittance of failure on his part but surely wasn’t. Bittman, the author of the New York Times cooking column The Minimalist for more than 10 years, isn’t one to write a bloated recipe loaded with weird ingredients. He sticks to the basics — the book is subtitled 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Food. His “Simplest Omelet,” for example, requires just salt and pepper, butter, four to five eggs, and optional milk. You can do that.
Mon., Jan. 12, 6 p.m., 2009