The Mark Bittman Challenge

I received "How to Cook Everything" by Mark Bittman as a birthday gift this year.  The book has 2,000 recipes in it.  It's huge!  This book has everything in it to help make you a better cook including cutting techniques and how to make a basic sauce.  How to Cook Everything needs to be my bible.  We all know I'm not creative in the kitchen, heck I'm not even very coordinated in the kitchen.  It's a good day if I don't cut myself or almost set something on fire.  I don't want my blog to become a cheesy Julie and Julia type thing, but I do plan on getting to know this book intimately and posting about it often.  

Who's Mark Bittman?  He is a food writer for the NY Times and he is not a chef, but he wants to help people cook.  Here's a link to his column in the NY Times, The Minimalist and a link to his Blog on the Opinion Pages.  I would love to be only partially as knowledgeable as this man.  I figure I can start my journey by cooking as much from his book as I can.  Let's get this straight right away, I will not be cooking everything in this book.  Not only can I not afford to cook everything in it, I also don't like everything in it.  I'm not going to sacrifice for my hobby and eat anything that makes me shake and shiver.  My hope is that after cooking from this book, I will know the basics about how to make a variety of things and I will be able to make them without a recipe in the future.  I'm hoping for this, I didn't say it was actually going to happen.

To get myself into tackling such a big project I decided to browse some of his recipes online and I found one that sounded easy and appealing,  More Vegetable Less Egg Frittata.  I've never made a frittata, in fact I rarely eat eggs, but the vegetable part made me happy.  I'm always looking for meat-free recipes. 

Start by sauteing sliced onion (season it with salt and pepper), once its transparent and tender you can add whatever vegetables you want to the pan.  I chose a variety of mushrooms and asparagus for this frittata.  Saute them until they are tender.

Beat the eggs in a bowl with some Parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper.  Pour the egg mixture on top of the vegetables in the pan.  Turn the heat to low and cook until the eggs are just starting to set.

I really have no idea when an egg is set, but I'm assuming it's when it's no longer liquidy.  Once it's barely set you can put it under the broiler for a few minutes to finish it off. 

Finished Product:

My thoughts:  Oh yeah baby!  Something I finally really like.  I loved that there was a ton of veggies in this and only a small amount of egg (I used 3).  I left the asparagus a little crispy because I knew the rest of the dish was going to lack crunch.  Of course something always has to go wrong and I made Jiffy Corn Muffins to go with this and managed to somehow put 1 cup of milk in the mix instead of a 1/3 cup.  Oh well.  They were still edible, they just didn't get big. This was a great recipe and I am very excited to try some of Bittman's other recipes. The Mark Bittman Challenge is on!

Next Up:  Spiced Coconut Lentil Soup (Not Mark Bittman's recipe, but we all know how much I LOVE coconut so I had to try it!)