A Guide to Microwave Cooking (Richland, 1981) suggests that microwave cooking is great for dieters, as "Calories can be kept to a minimum because you seldom cook in oil. Salty seasonings or butter can be eliminated or decreased as desired." Of course, there's no mention that all of these steps will lead to a decrease in flavor, too. Even the book doesn't seem to buy its own hype, as there are only three pages devoted to diet recipes.
I was saddened by the thought of the Tuna Casserole. I mean, you can make the whole house smell like microwaved tuna and cauliflower for the glorious reward of, well...
... hot tuna and mashed cauliflower with some canned mushrooms, flavored with dried onion, tomato juice, and a bit of salt and pepper. And then I realized that this melancholy felt kind of familiar. (Turns out, this recipe bummed me out many years ago when it appeared in a different cookbook.)
If you want to spend more than an hour microwaving something that could be fixed on the stovetop just as easily, the book offers Italian Chicken Stew.
Yep: It involves microwaving pre-cooked chicken cubes with a bunch of dried veggies and tomato juice for almost an hour-and-a-half! I wondered why the recipe required so many dried veggies, as it's not like veggies are that caloric to begin with or that drying them will change the calorie content anyway. Maybe it's because the soup won't reduce much (as it would have on the stovetop), so it will be less flavorful unless there's something to soak up some of the water in the tomato juice. Or maybe it's that the book encourages readers to dry their own veggies in the microwave and is trying to cross-promote the chapter about using the microwave to dehydrate things.
On the plus side, the 1-1/2 to 2-hour drying time makes this method more efficient than the dehydrator I use, but then again, I can just leave the dehydrator on while I'm asleep and wake up to dried veggies rather than having to rearrange them every 15 goddamn minutes, so the dehydrator wins as far as I'm concerned....
Maybe we should just skip ahead to dessert: the tiniest, whitest slice of cheesecake ever.
Topped with a decadent raw strawberry half with leaves still attached (perhaps to ensure it will take longer to eat?). What is this concoction?
If you guessed plain gelatin, artificial sweetener, skim milk, eggs, and cottage cheese (with a bit of lemon and vanilla as an attempt to give this some semblance of flavor), you won! The prize is just a crustless (no, let's be positive and call it crust-free) "dessert" that's a salmonella risk. But! It has an unusually specific 179-1/4 calories per serving. I guess dessert is fine as long as it stays under 180 calories? Who knows....
This section of the book is more effective at reminding me to stay away from diet culture than at enticing me to use the microwave for cooking full-on meals or desserts....
I wonder how many people patiently dried single layers of thinly sliced vegetables in their microwave for hours at a time. Even if your dehydrator takes longer, I bet that it holds more, too. These days people have a hard time waiting for a few minutes for leftovers to heat up, or popcorn to pop. It's hard to imagine anyone fussing with rearranging things every 15 minutes. I'm also amused by the way to test if it's done. Few foods aim to be tough and leathery.
ReplyDeleteThat is a good point about capacity. I can stack multiple trays-- not something easily done in the microwave. I dry tomatoes because C likes having small fresh tomatoes on hand for sandwiches, but he can rarely eat a whole package before they go soft. I hate fresh tomatoes but like them fine dried, so he eats the fresh ones and when they start to get too old to use fresh, I dry the rest so I can use them. I'd never have the patience for it if I had to microwave them, though!
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