Cooking for Father’s Day with Mark and Kate Bittman (Video)
Fathers. They are good for many things: love, support, taking you fishing, having a catch in the yard, telling you what’s in the newspaper and why so-and-so’s an idiot, slaving over a hot stove to put dinner on the table. Some fathers are good for that last one, anyway, including the food writer, Times columnist, and cookbook author Mark Bittman. Bittman, it turns out, might not have reached culinary greatness had he not become a father. In an essay in the recently released collection “Man with a Pan,” Bittman writes about how he started cooking in a serious way at the age of twenty-seven:
I had been a terrible student, and in fact I didn’t appear to be good at much of anything. I had been a cab driver, a trucker, an electrician’s gofer, a substitute teacher, and a traveling salesman. I was now married, with a newborn child. My lifelong sense that I would “become” a writer wasn’t working out.
So I became a cook.
When Kate arrived, everything changed. My wife was typically busy and tired, and she soon began medical school. It was clearly incumbent upon me, not to mention easier and more sensible, to lighten household burdens rather than try to nurse the newborn…. There was urgency and necessity—there was no way around it. My need to develop a career and to get dinner on the table combined to bring me from a mostly undisciplined posthippie pot-smoking politico to what used to be called a responsible member of society better than anything else could have.
Who is this Kate who effected this miraculous transformation? She is the first-born of Bittman’s two daughters (her younger sister is Emma), and she is the public-relations manager of The New Yorker, as well as a contributor to the Book Bench. Awhile ago, I asked Kate if she and her dad ever cooked together. “Not very often,” she said. “But,” I said, “don’t you think kids ought to cook with their dads, especially on Father’s Day?” Indeed, she did. Soon, she’d roped her dad into agreeing to cook with her (on camera) a simple, kid-and-dad-friendly dish perfect for a summer Sunday in June. It’s called Shrimp, My Way, and it’s adapted from Bittman’s recipe in “How to Cook Everything.” If you’re lucky enough to be spending this Father’s Day with your dad, why not give it a try?
Shrimp, My Way
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 or 4 big cloves garlic, cut into slivers
1 1/2 to 2 pounds shrimp, in the 20 to 30 per pound range, peeled, rinsed, and dried
salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh spicy paprika
Minced fresh parsley leaves for garnish
Warm the olive oil over low heat in a large, broad skillet. There should be enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan; don’t skimp. Put the garlic in the oil and cook for a few minutes, still over low heat, until it turns golden.
Raise the heat to medium-high and add the shrimp, salt, pepper, cumin, and paprika, in one layer. When the undersides of the shrimp are pink (two to three minutes) turn them over; cook another two minutes. Garnish and serve immediately.
Attention bivalvitarians: You can substitute scallops for shrimp in this dish.
Every now and again, I come across a book that stops me in my tracks. 
