In a cookbook market dominated by professional chefs, especially ones with Food Network shows, Mark Bittman is an anomaly—a journalist and a home cook with no formal culinary training. His forthcoming title, The Best Recipes in the World, is a throwback to the encyclopedic recipe books that were more common a decade ago. So why is his publisher betting that the New YorkTimes food columnist known as "the Minimalist" will have the biggest cookbook of the fall?

One explanation is the proven appeal of Bittman's keep-it-simple strategy, which cuts right to the heart of why most people buy cookbooks: to learn how to cook. That approach has clearly helped make his maximalist kitchen bible, How to Cook Everything, into a bestseller that, Bittman says, has sold more than a million copies since Wiley published it in 1998. It has even supported a How to Cook Everything spinoff series, including HTCE: Easy Weekend Basics; HTCE: Vegetarian Cooking, and three other books, which have sold a total of 1.7 million copies.

Though there's no doubt that Bittman's name is a big selling point for The Best Recipes in the World, it remains to be seen if his second major work, which he calls the "natural heir" to HTCE, will prove as indispensable to home cooks when Broadway publishes it in October. A 1000-recipe doorstopper on international fare, Best Recipes attempts to make exotic dishes like Korean kimchi and Spanish paella accessible to American home cooks.

Keeping It Simple

When it comes to his culinary credentials, Bittman tries to have it both ways. He brings a certain relish to saying that he taught himself to cook by reading cookbooks, but he is also quick to point out that he's spent probably 150 days alongside one of the world's most renowned chefs, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, with whom Bittman wrote two books. "But no one's ever taught me how to chop," Bittman adds, admitting that he chops very badly. Perhaps just as tellingly, Bittman's own New York City apartment doesn't boast a large or high-tech kitchen. In fact, he can't open the refrigerator and the oven at the same time.

Since he knows what it's like for home cooks, simplicity reigns in Bittman's books. His recipes never call for two ingredients where one will do. They rarely require ingredients not sold at the average supermarket. A few may take a long time to cook, but Bittman promises that cooks won't have to pay much attention to what's going on. For example, in his new book, Bittman explains that while Peking Duck is "a big deal" best reserved for special occasions, Roast Duck, a simpler Cantonese version, is a lot easier for everyday meals. The ingredient list is only eight items long, plus the duck, and the dish can be made ahead of time and served at room temperature.

Asked why he didn't keep it simple by focusing on a single region or cuisine in his new book, Bittman answers, "I'm a New York Jew by birth, which is not a great culinary heritage. I am not an ethnic cook. I am not going to do the New York Jew cookbook." He pauses. "Or maybe someday I will. But it won't be as interesting as this."

The Pen and the Spatula

Bittman began teaching himself to cook around the same time he began his career as a journalist in the late 1970s at a small community newspaper outside Boston, where he did everything from reporting to production. As a food writer, his first break came in 1980, when he sold a story about dining in restaurants (and why you're often better off staying home and cooking) to the New Haven Advocate. He still has the article, framed in his apartment.

Though he continued to write about various subjects, Bittman recalls, "Eventually I was forced to make some choices and, at every fork in the road, I chose the one that led to food." After a stint as food editor at the New Haven Register, and as editor of Cook's magazine (predecessor to Cook's Illustrated), he began writing for the Times. His association with the prestigious paper soon led to his first cookbook contract, with Macmillan, for Fish, published in 1994. Now published by Wiley, it is in its eighth printing, with more than 80,000 copies sold, Bittman says.

Bittman believes his journalism background has given him an advantage as a cookbook author, because he sees recipe writing as a form of technical writing—a "craft" that he's honed over the years. To him, the key is offering simple, completely straightforward instructions. "This is how I learned how to cook," he says. "This is how I want to cook. This is how everybody can cook."

A Two-House Author

Ironically, for a gourmet who puts a premium on simplicity, Bittman's publishing history has been a little messy, despite a strong start. His first major book, How to Cook Everything, won IACP and James Beard awards, selling into the six figures within six months of its August 1998 publication by Macmillan, but it was no guarantee of stability. The house soon entered into a cycle of takeovers, buyouts and consolidation agreements that sent the book on an odyssey through Pearson, Simon & Schuster, IPG and Hungry Minds, before it finally came to rest at Wiley.

Bittman's agent, Angela Miller, sold his next two cookbooks to Broadway—both of them collaborations with four-star chef Vongerichten: Jean-Georges: Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef (1998) and Simple to Spectacular: How to Take One Basic Recipe to Four Levels of Sophistication (Oct. 2000). Then the house released a string of spin-offs from Bittman's Timescolumn: The Minimalist Cooks Dinner (Sept. 2001); The Minimalist Cooks at Home (Sept. 2002); and The Minimalist Entertains (March 2003). Through it all, HTCE continued to flourish at Wiley.

Though Broadway now has the lion's share of Bittman's work, he hasn't let his relationship with Wiley lapse. The New Jersey—based house recently published Bittman Takes on America's Chefs, a tie-in to Bittman's first TV show, a 12-part PBS series that launched in April and will run through the fall on 72 affiliated stations.

Unlike other popular cookbook authors, who have risen to prominence based in part on their TV exposure in the past five years, Bittman hasn't made TV a major focus and remains circumspect about how cooks can best work in the medium. His series, in which he hosts a revolving cast of celebrity chefs (including Daniel Boulud and others), stands in direct contrast to the typical Food Network format, featuring a lone cook. Bittman likes it that way: "With all due respect to my friends and colleagues who do these kinds of shows, I cannot watch a single person cooking show," he comments. "Are there other kinds of TV where people stand there and do something by themselves for half an hour? I can't think of it. Even Bob Vila had a sidekick!"

Maximum Impact?

The Best Recipes in the World may be Bittman's most ambitious book, and the biggest Broadway has tackled. The house is sparing no effort for the 768-page tome, which has a $29.95 price tag and a whopping 250,000-copy announced first printing. During Book Expo, the imprint threw a party for Bittman at Jean-Georges, where giveaways included a 32-page blad, a package of spices and recipe postcards. The house is offering eight-copy floor displays, posters and blow-ups for bookstores, and is assembling a "cooking/reading club pack" with recipe and reading suggestions.

Bittman himself will tour 19 cities, and says he is definitely up to it after traveling all over the globe for five years, visiting neighborhood restaurants and home kitchens in places like Rome, Istanbul, the Mekong Delta and the Yucatán.

Being the Minimalist, of course, Bittman made some adjustments, streamlining, modernizing and updating versions of classics, with the goal of making accessible "the most common recipes in the countries that are underrepresented in most cookbooks." Yet for all the research that the book entailed, Bittman says it still seems like "a hobby" to cook. "If I didn't get paid to write cookbooks, I wouldn't write cookbooks," he muses. "But if I didn't get paid to cook, I'd still cook."