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NYT's 101 summer recipes
Jul 23, 2007
An unusually good cooking column in the NYT last week contains 101 recipes that take 10 minutes or less:
1. Make six-minute eggs: simmer gently, run under cold water until cool, then peel. Serve over steamed asparagus.
2. Toss a cup of chopped mixed herbs with a few tablespoons of olive oil in a hot pan. Serve over angel-hair pasta, diluting the sauce if necessary with pasta cooking water.
...and so on, with 99 other recipes.
I like the terseness. Many recipes fit into a single sentence. This is pure, direct helpful instruction - no messing around with overblown graphics or rarified ingredients. (This is much the spirit in which I dispense technology picks in Uncle Mark.) Here directness and efficiency make a good experience.
What expertise do you have that you can boil down into a sentence or two? (I'm interested to see - post a comment.)
P.S. Here's the article in bit-literate clip format. (See Chapter 6 of Bit Literacy for a description of clip format and why it's important.)
If your Windows computer locks up or fails inexplicably, shut it down completely before restarting it.
Nothing like a good "rule of thumb" sums up a general idea. For example: "'i' before 'e', except after 'c'".
When you're angry, it doesn't mean that someone else has done something wrong, but that you have. Find out what.
less is more. keep is simple.
Nothing that's written cannot be shortened.
But most one-sentence "recipes" are really just "serving suggestions" -- useful to have on hand, but requiring a certain amount of pre-existing knowledge or expertise. "Serve over steamed asparagus" assumes you already know everything you need to know about steaming asparagus, including how long it will take. I'm a very novice cook, and I'd rather work from a more detailed set of instructions; I can always filter out the inessential information ("season with lemon juice" or whatever), but having it increases the odds of my having a good eating experience!
Writing can always be shortened.