Kitchen Matrix Gives You Access to Endless Recipe Creation
Welcome to Cookbook of the Week. In this series, I highlight cookbooks that are unique, easy to use, or just special to me. While searching for a specific recipe online serves a quick purpose, flipping through a truly excellent cookbook has its own magic.
Cookbooks don’t really teach you how to cook. Instead, they offer a collection of recipes that you (hopefully) will enjoy. However, if you find recipes that inspire you to adapt and modify them to create even more new recipes, well, that’s a godsend.
The cookbooks I return to again and again are a small library of inspiration. Sometimes I use their recipes, and sometimes I find a flavor combination or cooking method that I’m excited to try later in the week. But it’s rare that a cookbook reveals how a chef thinks about creating recipes. This week I chose The Kitchen Matrix as my cookbook of the week because it is unlike any other cookbook I have seen before. This is a cookbook with basic lessons on how to cook.
A little about the book
This book was written by Mark Bittman, a legendary food journalist and author ( read more about him here ). While this cookbook isn’t new—it was published in 2015—its message is timeless: cooking is an infinite spectrum. A single recipe exists on a branch of an extensive family tree of ingredients. Okay, enough romance: let me explain.
Yes, the pages of The Kitchen Matrix are filled with recipes, but following one recipe you can use anywhere from three to 12 different ways. Basically, how to make a completely new dish by changing the main ingredient, or what you get by changing the cooking method from grilling to steaming. Reveals connections between different dishes within a food set. For example, how just two or three ingredients separate minestrone from mushroom soup from tomato-garlic soup. The cooking method is the same; it’s a matter of replacing this with that. When you see how cleverly Bittman has organized these sections, the art of cooking suddenly becomes a clear science.
A great book for the confident cook.
Just because someone is a confident cook doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy a good cookbook. The Kitchen Matrix is more like Cooking 201 than Cooking 101. Best suited for those who already feel good walking around the kitchen, using different cooking methods, trying new flavors and taking risks. This cookbook is full of inspiration and has plenty to please the confident cook.
However, many of the additional recipes are written as what I call abbreviated recipes, while other recipes are written in the full version – with a list of ingredients and step-by-step instructions at the bottom. For example, in Corn + 12 Ways you’ll get a short recipe for “Mix this, this and this together.” Cook until it’s browned.” Then at the bottom there are two versions of the recipe with only the ingredients replaced.
Experienced cooks will be able to put it all together, although I think the missing information can be very confusing for many other home cooks.
Recipes You Can Expect
I like that many of the chapters are divided by main ingredients, such as meat, vegetables or poultry and eggs. Each chapter will have a mini-section covering the main popular subjects included in that section. In the Vegetables section, you can choose from Salad Greens +12 Ways, Celery +16 Ways, or Vegan Meals +10 Ways and many more.
It speaks to my habit of cooking in the evenings when I find that I have six zucchini that are about to get weird, so I need a zucchini-centric STAT. I can just go to Zucchini +12 Ways and choose between raw, grilled, microwaved or sautéed and have three recipes ready for each. Even if I had more pumpkin than one recipe calls for, I would at least have 11 different options for tomorrow’s lunch. This is support. It’s like a non-creepy AI (if you can imagine). I feel like this cookbook will support me when I need it.
My favorite feature of Kitchen Matrix is the recipe generator. There are several in the book, and they are two-page visual diagrams of popular dishes such as the Sandwich Recipe Generator, Tartar Recipe Generator, Grain Salad, Eggs, Jam, and they show you the ingredients involved, and also options. so you can create your own. Professor Bittman wants you to learn how to create your own recipes. Like a former teacher looking at the beautiful diagrams, I wipe a tear from my eye.
The dish I cooked this week
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s winter and hell has frozen over. I was in a soupy mood. I moved on to “Soups and Stews” and settled on “Vegetable Soups.” I love soups at all meals, and the matrix for this section consisted of cream, broth, legumes and vegetables. I can never refuse cream soup, so I turned my attention to it. The main recipe was creamy spinach soup, and underneath it were two options: curried cauliflower or ginger squash.
I chose the curried cauliflower. The basic spinach soup recipe had simple instructions. Essentially, cook the garlic and onions in water, then add the spinach and yoghurt before pureeing the whole thing. In the cauliflower soup, I was advised to replace several ingredients: garlic with ginger, spinach with cauliflower, parsley with curry powder, and yogurt with coconut milk. I did exactly that, but using the same method as the spinach recipe.
The soup was a golden embrace. Creamy without creaming, thick but not sticky, with just enough spice to complement the natural flavor of the cauliflower. It was a reminder that a great soup can be incredibly simple, and as a result, I know how to make 11 more easy soups. This is enough to survive the winter.
How to buy
Kitchen Matrix is available online as an e-book (at a great price), and keep in mind that you can support your local bookstores by asking them to order it to you if they don’t have it in stock.