Tuesday Recipes: "The Compleat I Hate to Cook Book"

Author Peg Bracken published the first “I Hate to Cook Book” cookbook back when cooking dinner was a daily event in most people’s homes. Carryout was limited, microwave ovens were nowhere on the horizon, and canned soup and Swanson’s line of frozen dinners topped the list of convenience foods. I cooked, but my repertoire began and ended with beef or chicken seasoned with Lawry’s seasoned salt and served with potatoes, preferably baked.

“Some women, it is said, like to cook. This book is not for them,” Bracken wrote in the introduction to “The Compleat I Hate to Cook Book” (1992, Galahad Books) a collection of 440 recipes culled from her first and subsequent cookbooks, all of them originally published by Harcourt Brace & Co. between 1960 and 1986.

Some of the recipes, like “Sweep Steak” (p.43) and “Swipe Steak”(p. 91) were dishes I tried, liked and made more than once, probably because they’re easy and everyone would eat them. After all, there aren’t a lot of dishes you can put in the oven at 3pm and serve at 6pm without having to do something to them in between.

I think it was the humor that made Bracken’s cookbooks so popular or maybe it was the honesty.

“Only an occasional menu suggestion is given, by the way, because menus so often tend to peter out. What sounds good and even possible at nine in the morning often sounds like more trouble than it’s worth at blast-off time, or 5:30 pm.”

I don’t want to even think about all the times I’ve purchased the ingredients for a multi-course dinner and then abandoned the whole idea after spending five or six hours working on one article or another. It’s always a relief to know that other people have the same problem.

If, after perusing the book, you think the whole canned soup thing is overdone, listen up. I can remember thinking that a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup in the pantry was like money in the bank, and I admit I was pleased to see that Peg Bracken did as well. Obviously, given the continuing popularity of the Thanksgiving green bean and onion ring casserole made-more often than not- with canned soup, so do a lot of people.

And if you shudder to think about the amount of salt and fat in a lot of the recipes, look at the labels on some of the products you routinely eat. Oh…and remember to be honest about the real size of an adult serving. Does anyone actually eat a mere two-thirds of a cup of ice cream? Who shares a can of soup with 1 1/2 other people?

Still, Irish Coffee, a mix of instant coffee, Irish whiskey and sugar topped with whipped cream (p.145) doesn’t sound like dessert to me, let alone a dessert I’d serve to company as Bracken suggested in her first book. She later amended her original praise (p.186-7), admitting that not everyone shared her enthusiasm for spiked coffee and then suggested adding some easy-to-make cookies guaranteed to satisfy even those who don’t.

Copies (used) of “The Compleat I Hate to Cook Book” are available on the internet. The commentary and recipes are fun to read and you might rediscover an old favorite-perhaps the ubiquitous California dip and some of the endless variations-or even find a new one. And so, without further ado…

Sweep Steak

2-3 pounds round steak or pot roast

package of onion soup mix

Put the meat on a sheet of aluminum foil big enough to wrap it in. Sprinkle the onion-soup mix on top of it, fold the foil airtight, around it, put it in a baking pan, and bake it at 300-degrees for 3 hours.

Swipe Steak

Which is the same thing except that you add a can of undiluted condenses mushroom soup in addition to the dry onion soup mix.

Cockeyed Cake, which is similar-if not identical-to Wacky Cake or any variation thereof.

11/2 cups sifted flour

3 tablespoons cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

5 tablespoons cooking oil

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 cup cold water

Put your sifted flour back in the sifter, add it to the cocoa, soda, sugar and salt, and sift this right into a greased square cake pan, about 9x9x2 inches. Now you make 3 grooves or holes, in this dry mixture. Into one, pour the oil; into the next, the vinegar; into the next, the vanilla. Now pour the cold water over it all. You’ll feel like you’re making mud pies now, but beat it with a spoon until it’s nearly smooth and you can’t see the flour. Bake it at 350-degrees for half an hour.