By Barbara McGuire
Daily Bruin Contributor
Forget the oven, don’t even think about the microwave, and
who needs a stove. Clearly these cooking tools are passé, now
that novel recipes call for cooking with dishwashers and car
engines.
This kind of “extreme” cooking for adventurous cooks
is contained in just one of the crazy chapters in Bob
Blumer’s newest cookbook “Off The Eaten Path: Inspired
Recipes for Adventurous Cooks,” each of which contain recipes
to make full-course meals.
Though Blumer’s resume lacks any formal chef or cooking
training, his innovative recipes tell a different story, and for
beginner cooks, this is far from a bad thing. His informality, in
fact, shows his understanding of the everyday cook. His recipes
don’t involve any difficult jargon or methods making them
easy to follow and enjoy.
Five chapters in “Off the Eaten Path” contain
various recipes and have bizarre titles such “Winner
Dinners” and “Not Luck Dinner Parties” (the
opposite of “pot luck”). There is an additional chapter
at the end, “Enlightening Morsels,” which instructs
readers how to pick a wine complementary to their meal, suggests
important utensils to keep around the kitchen and gives advice
where to do the best “inspired shopping” for
ingredients.
The “Surreal Meals” chapter is by far one of the
more interesting aspects of the book. Here, one of the recipes was
actually inspired by Playboy’s Miss April 1996, whom Blumer
once sat next to during his guest appearance on a talk show.
“”˜Bed’ of Polenta” involves creating a
“bed” out of ravioli (used as pillows) and lasagna
noodles (used as the sheet), floating atop a plate full of
sauce.
To further aid the reader on selecting an appropriate meal,
creative pictures of each dish, such as the “Bed of
Polenta,” are either located next to the recipe or all the
dishes are shown together as a meal. Blumer did the artwork
himself, which is ingenious enough to make “Off the Eaten
Path” a great coffee-table book as opposed to a cookbook.
Nothing seems too difficult to make. Even in the “Extreme
Cuisine” chapter, which involves recipes such as
“Dishwasher Salmon with Piquant Dill Sauce” in which a
salmon is cooked alongside dirty dishes and soap, the directions
remain simple. Blumer mentions as “le secret” for this
recipe ““ something contained with most recipes which provide
useful tips to the cook ““ to make sure that all items in the
dishwasher are secure as to not accidentally stab the salmon.
Also contained in this chapter are instructions on how to cook
shrimp and trout on a car engine. Recommended cooking time for the
shrimp is about 50 miles, while for the trout one must be making
quite the journey, about 100 miles, with a break half-way through
the drive to flip the main course.
The crazy “Cinematic Suppers” chapter provides
recipes for meals to make on movie watching night. An especially
fun aspect of this section is that each meal comes with directions
on how to make different spiced popcorn ranging from
“Parmigiano Popcorn” to “Five-Spice
Popcorn.”
Each different full-course meal comes with one of Blumer’s
special mixed drinks. Even his breakfast meal, which consists of
“Eggs Carbonara” and “Blackened Home-Fries
Potatoes from Hell,” comes with an accompanying drink.
“Gonzo Grapefruit” involves dumping out the grapefruit
juice, refilling it with vodka and then broiling for three minutes.
“Le Secret” here is to not eat your grapefruit like
this every day.
Blumer ensures that the cook knows exactly what to expect prior
to attempting to prepare the meal. He predicts how long everything
as a whole should take to create, what can be done in advance and
what type of music should be listened to not only cook the meal,
but to clean up and wash as well.
Overall, Blumer leaves absolutely no aspect of the cooking
process untouched. His crazy artistry, as well as crazy meal
tactics, not only makes it fun to create a meal, but makes
“Off the Eaten Path” something fun to look at as well.
Just be sure to keep your fire extinguisher on hand.