Fred's Book Club: Eats!

Welcome back to our Wednesday "Hump Day" feature, the Humpback Writers, wherein we showcase books by authors who have had the bad luck to be brought to my attention and therefore unfairly labeled as "Humpback." I know, it's dumb, but I've been doing this for months and it's too late to change now. 

Today we're continuing this week's food theme with an actual cookbook, and an old one at that:

On Campus Cookbook: For the Non-Kitchen Cook is a long out of print tome that was created to help the college student, living in the dorm, to cook real, actual food using the simplest tools of the day -- blender, hot pot, and toaster oven -- which one might be able to keep in or sneak into one's dorm room. Tabletop microwave ovens had been around a long time when this book came out, but the author, Mollie Fitzgerald, an undergrad at Duke at the time, doesn't even mention them. I don't know why, but a lot of chefs eschew them, finding that they cook poorly and often unevenly.

So, okay, you may be thinking, Fred wants to do a cookbook because Thanksgiving is coming up. Why this ancient book that is directed at people living in student housing? And a jolly good question it is, too!

Back in the Cretaceous Era I was working on the student newspaper, in the Features & Arts pages, when we got this book in as a review copy. At the time I could not boil an egg without turning it into soup. So I suggested to the editor in chief that it might make a funny piece for me to take the book home and try to make a dinner with it, anticipating disaster. There were seventy recipes in this slim volume; surely I could choose an appetizer, main dish, side dish, and dessert to ruin. He said sure.

Not only did I not make a disaster of a meal, but the buddy who agreed to be my fellow guinea pig thought it was delicious. And so did I. Thus began an interest in cooking that has stayed with me to this day.

I don't want to include a photo of the pages of my copy of the book, which, as with all beloved cookbooks, are quite messy; let me just take the liberty of writing up two of them so you can see how simple Mollie Fitzgerald made it for the befuddled cook with limited equipment:

Artichoke Dip

14-oz. can artichoke hearts, drained well and cut into small pieces
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt or garlic powder
Choice of crackers

1. Preheat the toaster oven to 425°F.
2. Combine all the ingredients, except the crackers, in the order given in a medium-size aluminum foil baking pan or an ovenproof serving dish.
3. Bake the artichoke dip for 25 minutes or until the top is golden brown and bubbly.
4. Remove the dip from the oven and allow it to cool for a few minutes before serving on crackers.

Makes 3 cups

Lemon-Broiled Chicken

4 boneless chicken breast halves, or 4 to 6 other pieces
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
3 tablespoons lemon juice, or the juice from 1 fresh lemon
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon honey (optional)
1 tablespoon soy sauce (optional) 

1. Rinse the chicken pieces and pat them dry. Place the chicken in an aluminum foil baking pan so that the pieces are touching. Set aside.
2. Combine all the remaining ingredients in your hot pot on medium low heat. Once the butter has completely melted, unplug the hot pot and pour the liquid over the chicken.
3. Broil according to [the instructions from your toaster oven; the book gave detailed instructions but most ovens come with instructions -- you want the chicken browned on both sides, basically], basting several times with the sauce. Spoon a little of the sauce over each piece of chicken as you serve it.

Serves 2 to 3

The Lemon Broiled Chicken's sauce is great over rice, so make extra. Do include the honey and soy sauce.

This is haute cuisine for dorm food. (College students: That's haute, French for elevated, not hawt, but the stuff will be hot, so don't burn yourself.)

The theme of my article turned out to be how a good cookbook can help anyone turn into a passable home cook. The editor liked the piece, and ran it, too.

When people tell me they can't cook, I remind them that no one was born cooking, and that anyone can get a core of twenty or so recipes that they can make from scratch to feed the family. Next week, a lot of people in America will be cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the first time and panicking about it. They shouldn't. It really isn't that hard if you keep it simple and pay attention to what you're doing. The On Campus Cookbook was a great help to get me going.

This is, I believe, Mollie Fitzgerald's only book; she's actually gone into the family business, doing high-priced travel to exotic destinations, and is apparently the firm's fly-fishing expert. She did me a good turn with this book, though, and if she ever decides to write another, I'll buy it.