Maybe it was that the title was so close to Guide to Microwave Cooking and Recipe Book (Hotpoint/ General Electric, 1979). Then when I started looking through it, I recognized some features from Tappan's Microwave Cooking Guide (1979), including a plate full of melting ice "penguins" to help demonstrate how microwaves work and a guide to drying flowers in the microwave. Still, I picked it up because I can't resist an old microwave cookbook, especially one that is overly ambitious.
If you noticed the crown roast picture on the cover of Tappan's Microwave Cooking Guide, you might wonder why I never told you how to make that when I discussed that book. Fine, I'll fix that oversight, as the recipe is in this book too. If you want to buy a big, expensive cut of meat and then cook it in the microwave, start out by making it look like an alien that's just about to start creeping into the sleepy 1950s town you inhabit and engulfing any housewives unlucky enough to be hanging the laundry out to dry. Well, one of those aliens with a meat thermometer in it.
Instead of being absorbed, grab it, upend it, stuff it full of bread, and cover its "feet" with foil in a most humiliating fashion. Don't dislodge its meat thermometer, though, as that will come in handy when you microwave it on medium until it hits 170℉.
Hell, if you want the full instructions to potentially ruin half-a-grocery-bill's worth of meat (or a weird sci-fi movie alien), here they are:
And it should come out looking "glorious," per the book.
"But," you may ask, "does the book have the instructions for the extra-humiliating 'daisies' to adorn the alien's 'feet'?"
Worry not! There's a full-page tutorial.
My favorite part is using a pen cap as a cutter to create daisy centers out of a slice of American cheese.
If you want a microwave project that's still pretty complicated but significantly cheaper, the book also offers a multi-step Mexican Omelet Roll.
And if you're having trouble visualizing what it would look like to roll up the omelet, the book even offers a step-by-step picture guide.
If you're lucky, the final product will be very colorful, with neat little black olive buttons across its back. (And if you're not lucky, this will probably fall apart.)
No word on what makes this unseasoned log-o-eggs-n-veggies Mexican, but my guess would be that it's the green pepper, onion, and pimento (though early '80s cooks could just as easily have called it "Spanish" or "Italian" with no real change to the recipe).
And if your efforts at microwave cooking fall too flat, the book also offers a way to draw attention away from the microwaved food: Be a Cut-Up!
That is, make an edible arrangement not from fruits, but from turnips, radishes, and olives. Maybe that will distract everyone from the shivering lump of microwaved eggs or the daisy-spouting (but not very browned) crown roast....
I worked in an office that was given edible arrangements sometimes. They were the fruit variety, not vegetables. The vegetable variety does not seem to have caught on. I think that some people decided that 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day meant 5 servings of fruit a day. Go with what people like (well, if you want to see them again, otherwise don't).
ReplyDeleteYeah-- I can't see there being a huge demand for dried-out room-temperature dyed-yellow raw turnip, even if it does sport an olive-half center.
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