Try 3 all-time favorite recipes from Mark Bittman

Video: Mark Bittman serves up his greatest hits

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   >>> this morning on how to cook everything today, the best of mark bitt man began writing his column in 1997 . now that column is coming to an end.

   >> hi, matt.

   >> you're ending that but you are going to do recipes in the new york times magazine and do a weekly op-ed on food.

   >> really exciting.

   >> that's cool.

   >> yeah.

   >> looking at the recipes from the minimalist you have three hall-of-famers.

   >> i have a list today of 25, which wasn't easy out of a thousand.

   >> this is spaghetti with fried eggs .

   >> arthur swartz, a fellow new yorker taught me this. this is one of the best late night, get home at 10:00 , you didn't eat dinner, you want something fast. this is great. take olive oil , set pasta to cook. fry up some eggs in there.

   >> okay.

   >> you don't have to be careful but the idea is you understood cook them. you really just want the whites to set.

   >> if you don't like the runny yolk can you break it?

   >> no. here's the thing, the heat of the pasta cooks the eggs. as we were talking about before this segment, the pasta will cook the eggs. you have residual heat from the pasta . add a little bit of pasta water and you get a sauce out of it. so we need to wait for a second here.

   >> using regular spaghetti. can you use other pasta ?

   >> you want long pasta . spaghetti, linguini, fettucine. even this is fine but i would do this more.

   >> for our purposes.

   >> add the pasta --

   >> right on top of the eggs.

   >> maybe if it's looking a little thick you would add a little bit of cooking water. we'll see about that. that is going to cook the eggs. you get this really beautiful sau saucy, eggy pasta that you finish with parmesan.

   >> a little bit of salt.

   >> and black pepper .

   >> if you were going to cook that as a simple dinner what would you serve it with?

   >> well, bread for sure and a salad would be nice. this will make a great breakfast in five minutes.

   >> we'll dig into that. the next is black cod broiled with miso sauce. this you get at trendy restaurants.

   >> japanese restaurants, $26, $30 a plate. black cod isn't cheap, but you can get this for $6 or $8. gently warm miso which is sold in little tubs and looks like this, with soy and mirin which is sweet sake but you could use honey in place of that. put it over the fish.

   >> i get the sense in restaurants that they marinated the fish in advance.

   >> that is an advanced way of doing it and somewhat improved but this is great. taste that.

   >> pardon my finger. it's delicious. how long does it take to cook black cod ?

   >> six, eight minutes, ten tops. we'll put it in the broiler.

   >> from the stovetop to the broiler.

   >> you just want to do the bottom a little bit. bring in the clowns.

   >> hey!

   >> are you kidding? this is the food of my people.

   >> you're supposed to ask how you know it's done.

   >> how do you know it's done?

   >> i'm going to dig in, too.

   >> a knife slides in easily. this works with almost every fish.

   >> don't you use a temperature reader?

   >> not for fish.

   >> real quickly, hall of fame recipe number three is mexican chocolate tofu pudding .

   >> this is nondairy pudding made with tofu. it is amazing.

   >> does it have cinnamon? like mexican chocolate?

   >> unreal.

   >> incredible.

   >> you're unreal, mark.

   >> thank you.

   >> we're back after your local news.

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