Keep It Simple, Stupid

Below, this week's Idiot Convention Today Show clip. Bittman shows how to ball out and make 5 meals from 10 ingredients, plus pantry staples. Meredith and David seem really confused by this concept, and our man has to spend about half the segment explaining the basic concept to them, but he pulls out a real win in the end.

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What's really worth watching, as usual, is a Times clip from last week about steaming.

Steaming [nytimes video]
5 Meals, 10 Ingredients [Bitten blog]

Minimalist Wednesday: Fast Tomato Sauce and Grown Up Mashed Potatoes

Today Bittman took his spiel to the Today show to do a recipe very near and dear to my own heart: Fast Tomato Sauce, that endlessly variable recipe that was a key reason I started the Ben Cooks Everything project in the first place. He didn't call it Fast Tomato Sauce, but that's exactly what it was, complete with the toss-in-anything-you-like attitude. Matt and Meredith keep the obnoxious to a minimum, which is nice. And! Bittman says you can throw in the rind of parmesan cheese when making sauce and get a lot of flavor from that otherwise garbage-bound ingredient. Awesome.

Meanwhile, the Minimalist column in today's paper, which went online last week, is all about making mashed potatoes a little healthier and a little more interesting. Boil potatoes, add dandelion greens, olive oil (interesting substitution for the butter that I've got to try).

Both these recipes use a similar concept of using a lot of veggies (tomato sauce, dandelion greens), and a lot less starch than you usually would (pasta, potatoes). Mark Bittman: waning you off carbs. That being said, both of these (especially the mash) look tasty as hell. Are dandelion greens in season yet? I guess so.

As always, the NYTimes video is better, more informative, easier on the eyes, and with 100% less cheery morning talk show hosts. It is not, however, embeddable, so please enjoy below the Today show clip and click here or below to see the Times video.

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Green Potatoes from Liguria [nytimes video]
The Minimalist: The Greening of Mashed Potatoes [nytimes]

Minimalist Wednesday: We Have a Lefty!

Mark Bittman: rule breaker. In today's minimalist, he expands upon the savory oatmeal dish that he took to NPR and the blogs a couple weeks ago. Also featured is breakfast pizza, made on a crust of polenta. Hell yes. Bittman also took the idea to the Today Show, to show an overly sassy Meredith Vieira how the polenta pizza idea works and profess his leftiness. It looks dank. Check out the Today Show clip below, and don't skip the Times article which has even more recipes for what look like tasty and easy savory breakfasts. There's also a video with a different savory breakfast recipe on the Times website.

NOTE: If you're reading this, NYTimes web people, PLEASE make your videos embeddable. Then I could post those instead of the Today clips, and that would make me extremely happy. Alternatively, if the hosts of the Today Show would stop talking to their audience like a bunch of confused toddlers, maybe I wouldn't have such a problem with sharing their videos. So, there's two possible solutions.

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Your Morning Pizza [nytimes]
Savory Breakfast [ntimes video]
Savor a slice of Mark Bittman's polenta pizza [todayshow]