Mark Bittman has been cooking and writing about food for four decades, including creating simple recipes for his weekly column at the New York Times, The Minimalist. Simple, because they don’t require difficult-to-find ingredients (and if they do, he gives alternatives) or an elaborate process to get a delicious and often impressive meal on the table. He has challenged his readers to travel across cultures, try things they thought were really difficult to prepare, and to rethink the tools in their kitchen repertoire (last week’s Minimalist, for example, breathed new life into the food processor).

Bittman has also emerged as a sane voice in the discussion around food policy, penning excellent reporting on industrial meat production, sustainable fish, and organics, to name a few stories. In addition, he digests news on the food system, writes about his cooking exploits and publishes the work of other food writers (full disclosure: I’m one of them) on his site, markbittman.com. In his recent book, Food Matters, he discussed why we should cut out the junk food and cut down on the amount of meat we eat for our own health and for the well-being of the planet. Building on the success of that work comes the Food Matters Cookbook, with 500 recipes for inspired “less-meatarians.” I spoke with him this week about his new cookbook and the state of the discussion around food politics. Read more