05 Feb 2011 No Comments
RIP Mark Bittman
Whenever I turn on the TV and see Mario Batali, Gwyneth Paltrow, Claudia Bassols, and Mark Bittman, it makes me want strangle them all! It’s not because I hate the show, on the contrary, I love it. Who wouldn’t want to go around that beautiful country España, take in all the metal detectors sights and taste all the wonderful food? See, it all boils down to envy. In the beginning, there was just Gwyneth and Mario. We all know the famous Hollywood actress. What she has to do with the Spanish countryside and it’s food, well… Mario, is of course, a well-known chef and a pretty popular television personality as well; so him, I get. Well, Gwyneth when she is not too annoying with her high-handed Spanish tone—we all get that you speak the microdermabrasion language and are quite proud of yourself, but millions of people speak it too, hija; get over yourself—is tolerable, even amusing at times. Now, having Mark Bittman in the cast is a wily move. To balance out the foursome, throw in another male with a food background. It doesn’t quite seem fair but it does keep it clean and simple. Get the men to do more of the technical food stuff it seems, is the steadicam agenda. In fairness, the women were not quite all for decoration, although, they were decorative. Claudia Bassols is one good looking woman. The actress provided the Spanish element. She gave the show it’s background stuff, historical accents, and local color; the way only a native speaker and a daughter of the land could. Going back to hard money lenders sc Mark Bittman, mister minimalist. It’s a bit sad that the author of the “Minimalist” column, which runs weekly in the Dining section of the Times, and one of the country’s best-known and widely-admired food writers is hanging it up, at least for his regular Wednesday morning columns. Although he is not retiring from tankless water heaters writing, it seems the busy Mr. Bittman will be around in some form or other. Often called the hardest-working food writer in the country, Mark Bittman is the author of several best-selling books as well as a television personality. His “How to Cook Everything” has sold millions of copies and his follow-up book “How To Cook Everything Vegetarian” was one of the best selling books of 2007. “How To Cook Everything” has also garnered many accolades. It has won the Julia Child general cookbook award, the James Beard general cookbook award, and three other major international cookbook awards. Not only that, it has also spent a record 130 weeks on the Los Angeles Tomes’ “Cookbook Hot List.” Aside from writing, Mark Bittman is also a familiar face on television. He hosts the PBS series “Bittman Takes on America’s Chefs.” The show first aired in the spring of 2005 and won the James Beard Award for best cooking series of the same year. It had a second season called “The Best Recipes of the World,” which also aired on PBS. In the late 90s, Mark Bittman collaborated with the internationally famous chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten to create the best-selling “Jean-George: Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef.” The result is widely considered to be one of the most accessible chef’s cookbooks published. Mark Bittman’s first book, “Fish: The Complete Guide to Buying and Cooking,” is currently in it’s eight run of printing and is the best-selling book on the subject. Saving the best for last, the beloved Minimalist. Even though it won’t be there anymore—although Mr. Bittman says he won’t disappear completely, still, it won’t be the same—there is always the “Minimalist” cookbook series: “The Minimalist Cooks at Home,” “The Minimalist Cooks Dinner,” and “The Minimalist Entertains” now collected in “Mark Bittman’s Simple and Easy Recipes from the New York Times.”