How at-home cooks can stock their pantry with vital ingredients, avoid bad kitchen habits, and make better meals.

MarkrnBittman: Well, let'srnjust distinguish between chefs and cooks because I think this isrnimportant.  A chef is a person -- Irnknow the word is thrown around a lot but a chef is a person who runs thernrestaurant.  So, people who cook atrnhome are cooks.  There's nothingrnwrong with that.  People who likernto cook are cooks and I think that's a word that's been sadly denigrated and Irnthink it’s a lovely word.  It's anrnimportant word.  So what are thernmost experienced -- what are the most important techniques for shall we sayrnnovice cooks?

Well, reading Irnthink is probably very important technique because probably the best way tornlearn how to cook remains getting a couple of decent cook books and workingrnyour way through them and paying attention to what they're asking and learningrna few of the terms and it's such an easy – it's so much easier than playingrntennis, for example, that it's just a matter of starting to do it and thenrndoing it over and over again until you kind of get it. 

So it has more –rnit's presented as a highly skilled occupation and indeed for real chefs orrnpeople running restaurants or people doing demonstrations on Food Televisionrnit's not that easy.  But for mostrnof us it's not any harder than driving a car, it just needs a little practice.

Question:  What ten ingredients should everyonernhave in their kitchen?

Mark Bittman: Well, off the top of my head withoutrnlooking at my pantry, garlic, olive oil, that's two.  It's sort of a hard question because do you want to countrnrice and pasta?  Do you want torncount vinegar and lemons?  Do yournwant to count onions and eggs?  Maybernthat gets you close to ten.  Thernthing is that there are – I'd there are probably 30, somewhere between 25 andrn50, but say 30, ingredients that should be in pretty much every kitchen all therntime.  Ten is not going to dornit.  You can't do much with 10 butrnif you have 30 you can start doing serious cooking and if you have those 30 andrnyou stop at the store and pick up the piece of meat and fish and somernvegetables, something fresh, you're completely in business.  You can cook half of what there is torncook in all of the world.

Question:What are common bad habits of at-homerncooks?

MarkrnBittman:  That's an interesting question.  People don’t use high enough heat andrnpeople don’t preheat their pans and their ovens and things like that enough.  If you really want to put a crust onrnsomething, the pan needs to be hot, the butter or oil needs to be hot.  I mean, these are things that trainedrnpeople learn.  Home cooks are arnlittle afraid -- tend to be a little afraid -- or beginning home cooks tend tornbe a little afraid of high heat. rnSo that's a mistake people make.

Having lousyrnknives is a mistake people make and it's not that they don’t have expensivernknives, it's that they don’t have sharp knives.  On the other hand, spending too much money on cooking equipmentrnis a mistake a lot of people make because you don’t need to spend a lot ofrnmoney on cooking equipment.  Whatrnelse can I think of?

Well,rnattitude.  Attitude is interestingrnbecause people tend to be intimidated by cooking and there's nothing to bernintimidated about it.  As I said atrnthe beginning, it's really pretty simple. rnSo the right attitude is the attitude of I'm going to get something donernand it's going to be good.  It'srnnot, "Oh, I'm afraid of this," but nor is it, "Oh, I'm going tornbe Bobby Flay and do something breathtaking."  It's just going to be I'm going to try -- just like myrngrandma cooked for my mom I'm going to try to cook for my friends or my kids orrnwhatever, which is normal food, the food you like.

Question: What ingredients and spices arernunappreciated?

MarkrnBittman:  Well, spices in general go underrnappreciated by American cooks.  Irnmean, the spices that most Americans used in cooking tend to be the sort of yournmight call them warm spices or sweet spices like the kind of stuff you put inrnApple Pie: cinnamon, all spice, nutmeg, cloves, ginger a little bit.  Chilies are certainly becoming more andrnmore popular and that's great. 

Mildrnchili powder is a wonderful ingredient that's still not fully appreciated.  Pimenton, which is mild smoked paprika,rnwhich is a form of chili, so mild smoked chili powder is Spanish ingredient,rnreally fabulous.  All the Indianrnspices or Asian spices, however you want to call them, tend to bernunder-appreciated and these are really simple things to use.  I think part of the problem is when yournadd four or five spices to a recipe, it makes the recipe look long.  It makes the ingredient list look longrnand no one wants to see a long ingredient list.

So, when writingrnrecipes one has to be careful but, you know, spices are really -- if yournreplace them every now and then so that they're fairly fresh, they're there,rnthey're easy to use, it's not a big deal and they make a huge difference.