What follows is a tale about a clash of culinary cultures.
There`s nothing in it of ”East-West” cooking or ”fusion cuisine.”
It`s much more basic than that. Call it ”Microwave Munching: Zapping One Man`s Senses of Taste.”
It begins with a simple premise: Let`s find a virgin palate, someone virtually unexposed to microwavable food products, turn him loose in the supermarket and record his responses as he prepares the food and tastes it.
Since this isn`t science fiction, it wasn`t possible to pluck an ideal subject from a 1930s food market and, through time travel, transport him to Treasure Island on Clybourn Avenue on an unseasonably bleak and chilly evening recently. Instead, I was chosen.
Why me?
I`m old enough to have been weaned on fresh orange juice and from-scratch pancakes. My work leads me to esoteric restaurants where they serve only fish that has jumped from the sea into the frying pan and freshly killed free-range vegetables. At the supermarket, I`ve never been seen opening a freezer door except to grab a container of ice cream.
Furthermore, the assignment appealed to me because it was one-dimensional. All I had to do was seek out ”microwavable” food products that I hungered for in their non-microwavable state. No need to count calories, measure nutritional values or deal with seven different
manufacturers` MTV-era TV dinners or ersatz Chinese entrees. No need to ascertain anything except whether or not what I chose lived up to my taste expectations.
In short, can a foodie find happiness in a box?
As for preparing the food, the microwave oven is one of the few electronic wonders to appear since the electric typewriter that doesn`t intimidate me. Despite some hesitation about warming cycles and half-power settings, I`ve used it to cook bacon, fish, fruit and assorted vegetables to my complete satisfaction. I felt confident I could handle the ”cooking.”
Brave New World, open your door!
But which door?
At Treasure Island, I counted 29 separate freezer doors with products marked ”microwavable” behind them. There were more in the fresh meat case.
Despite enticing photographs on the packages, not very many among them set my taste buds humming with anticipation. In the end, I skipped desserts and snacks and chose a baker`s dozen that could be entrees or side dishes. My choices ranged from fish sticks to beef enchiladas, from macaroni and cheese to barbecued chicken.
When finally I laid down my fork and pencil, I had rated four of the 13 as very acceptable dishes. (That`s a very respectable .308 batting average, baseball fans.) These were, in order of preference, Hickory Smoked Chicken Barbecue from Rich Products Corporation, Booth`s Shrimp in Garlic Butter with Rice, Van de Kamp`s Crispy Breaded Large Fish Fillets and Stouffer`s Macaroni and Cheese.
While six others failed to fulfill the hopes I had for them, the final three were big disappointments. In my opinion, Swanson`s Original Style Chicken Pot Pie, Mrs. Paul`s Crispy Crunchy Breaded Fish Sticks and Old El Paso Beef Enchiladas should be left alone to slumber in their frozen state.
Four motivations
My choices, I realized in retrospect, were dictated by four distinctly different motivations: passion, nostalgia, convenience and health. Here, in detail, is what my fresh-food-prejudiced senses told me.
Passion is the element that`s always left out of the ”how to eat right” diet equations. There are certain dishes I crave in a purely sensual way, and when I find myself face to face with them, common sense goes out the window, taking moderation with it. Often they are ethnic dishes of peasant origin, earthy but also somewhat exotic. For example, Italy`s linguini and clams or chicken barbecue from the deep South.
Two of my four winners came from this category.
Hickory Smoked Chicken Barbecue in BBQ Sauce ($5.81 for a 16-ounce package) was in the fresh meat display. There was no brand. The name of manufacturer, Rich Products Corp., appeared in small type at the bottom of the package. The sauce (not too much and not too runny) tasted fine, properly peppery with pronounced smoke. The meat was slightly rubbery, but I`ve found that endemic to microwave-cooked chicken. The cover photo showed the barbecue tucked into a hamburger bun (with the notation ”bun not included”) and that`s the best way to eat this juicy, flavorful stew. The bread not only provided a platform for the barbecue, it absorbed the sauce. In the bun, this amount will provide four to six servings. It took seven minutes to warm up. While I waited, I poured a cold beer.
Booth`s Shrimp in Garlic Butter with Rice ($3.49 for 9.5 ounces) had an appealing integrity. The No. 1 and 2 listed ingredients actually were shrimp and butter. The cover photo, with the food piled on a small plate, made the shrimp look larger than life. In person, they were tender if bland. The butter sauce was profuse if bland. The accompanying vegetables-green beans and sweet red pepper-and the white rice all had good color and texture. The Booth`s people seem to have discovered a rare subspecies of flavorless garlic. I obtained taste punch by adding several drops of hot pepper sauce. It took eight minutes instead of the advertised six to get the frozen twin pouches thawed and properly hot.
The Budget Gourmet Linguini with Bay Shrimp and Clams Marinara ($2.07 for an ample 10-ounce portion) had good and bad points. It was easy to prepare; no pouches to open. The pasta had texture and the sauce, though too sugary for my taste, had a distinct herb and tomato flavor. The seafood, however, made me think I was looking through the wrong end of a telescope. The shrimp were almost as small as dried Oriental shrimp and just about as tough. The clams were hard to find and had the texture of rope when I did find one. Perhaps some of them were successfully masquerading as pieces of mushroom.
Lupita`s Beef Steak Fajitas ($4.09 for 22 ounces). A generation of Tex-Mex restaurateurs became rich on the premise that it`s impossible to screw up fajitas to the point a gringo won`t eat them. Lupita comes close, however. It took considerably longer than the advertised six minutes to heat the twin pouches, and dealing with them when hot wasn`t easy. The ”marinated tender seasoned beef steak” looked ugly. It and the tired vegetables that came from one pouch were dark brown and gray-green and drowning in watery liquid. The
”handmade flour tortillas” emerged from their pouch as shiny as Chinese steamed buns and tough. (Rescue them from the microwave, I told myself, put them on a griddle and they might taste fine.) A side of salsa had zip and snap, but a mere condiment couldn`t save this dish. There were at least six tortillas, but only about 2 generous servings from the filling.
Old El Paso Beef Enchiladas ($2.09 for 10 ounces, 2 enchiladas). Dead last on my score sheet. It took 53 ingredients and sub-ingredients to create something that insults the culinary traditions of both Mexico and Texas. What I found behind the pretty cover photograph after 12 minutes and three pauses to rotate the tray was a gloppy, mushy mess with only the mildest of Mexican spice taste. The meat may indeed be beef, but a bit of gristle provided the only texture.
Nostalgia proved to be a more unreliable impulse than passion. With the exception of custard desserts and mashed potatoes, I find it very difficult to go home again by dining on favorite foods of my youth. Indeed, after sampling the quartet of dishes that fell into this category, I began to wonder why excess salt, sugar and fat hadn`t left me a nutritional cripple before I reached my teens. But maybe they made macaroni and cheese, chicken pot pie and fish sticks differently when I was a kid. I hope so, but fear not. After all, I don`t even enjoy ”classic” Coca-Cola anymore.
Comparing microwavable versions of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese ($1.49 for 12 ounces) and Stouffer`s Macaroni & Cheese ($1.69 for 12 ounces) was enlightening. It torpedoed one of the strongest of my kid-crafted food memories. The Kraft product was that familiar orange color, but so gloppy it needed stirring. The pasta, longer and narrower than elbow macaroni, was hopelessly soft; the sauce was pasty and bland. It takes a nearly endless list of chemicals to make this happen, though Cheddar cheese is mentioned twice. At first Kraft seemed cheesier than Stouffer`s, but with further tasting it turned out to be merely sweeter and increasingly less interesting. Stouffer`s, on the other hand, became more satisfying with each passing bite. (I must admit this increased pleasure was due, in part, to my discreet addition of cayenne pepper.) The Stouffer`s product took four minutes longer and the cheese topping failed to brown in the microwave. But the texture of the pasta was firmer than Kraft; the sauce was saltier, sharper and more juicy. ”The bottom line,” my wife said, trying to console me, ”is that Kraft is for kids and Stouffer`s is for grown-ups.” The Kraft package promises two servings, but you could get three or four using either as a side dish.
Mrs. Paul`s Crispy Crunchy Breaded Fish Sticks ($2.39 for 12) were the product most obviously unsuited to the microwave. Thinner than the cigar-shaped cylinders in the package photograph, the texture was soggy, the fish flavor absent. (The sharp, bitter-sweet pickle sauce in a packet succeeded only in making blandness a virtue.) There`s a warning on the package that the sticks will fare better in a conventional oven. They do, though it takes nearly 20 minutes instead of two, and you end up tasting little except herbed- flavored breadcrumbs.
Swanson`s Original Style Chicken Pot Pie (75 cents for 7 ounces) has only 24 ingredients. That`s a primitive formula in the processed food game. Nonetheless the red pepper had slipped completely out of sight, the peas were crushed to death, the carrots were sponge-soft and I wondered why I needed potato since there was already so much starch in the pastry crust and the sauce. The high point was the chicken. It was reasonably tender with good texture. But the crust, of which there was a great deal, failed to become firm or turn golden in the microwave. The sauce was hopelessly viscous, opaque and oversalted. It was pot pie gone to pot.
Convenience isn`t as harsh a word to my ear as it may seem. I buy ready-made bread, ask the butcher to bone a leg of lamb and even have used bottled salad dressing for a marinade from time to time. Therefore the sight of chicken breast marinated in barbecue sauce and chicken breast in a blue cheese marinade, both in the fresh meat display, didn`t offend me. Buying something that can be ready to eat quickly is no sin, as long as it doesn`t take forever to forget the unpleasant taste.
Lloyd`s Fully Cooked Hickory Smoked Skinless Boneless Chicken Breast with Barbecue Sauce ($6.89 a pound, 2 pieces) was ready to serve in three minutes, only a few seconds longer than it took to read aloud what I was preparing. The fascination in many barbecue sauces is the tug-of-war between sweet and sour. No contest here. The sauce tasted sweet and so did the chicken, which had some smoke flavor as well but a watery texture. Call it protein candy for yuppies. Chicken by George Italian Bleu Cheese Gourmet Entree ($2.09 for 5 ounces, 1 serving). George, as you probably know, is beauty queen and TV personality Phyllis George, the subject of considerable ridicule even before she stepped into the test kitchen. In this case, however, I won`t blame the cook too much. After all, the filets were real chicken and the taste was mildly spicy if indistinct-nothing worse than I`d get at a bride`s first dinner party. The spoiler was the microwave. The package suggested preparing the chicken on the stove top, on the grill or in the oven. ”The above methods are recommended for maximum flavor and appearance. You may, however, microwave the product.” Don`t! The filets emerged from the microwave unbrowned and covered with measles-like spots of black, red and green (flecks of bell peppers?). The texture was tough. The taste was vinegary and harsh, suggesting nothing of either Italy or cheese.
Health concerns, my final motivation, were not prescribed dietary directives. I wasn`t looking for items that were low in calories or high in betacarotene. I wanted fish for old-fashioned reasons: for variety, because it`s ”lighter” than meat and, in the language of a simpler time, ”good for you. So I picked two fillet preparations, one breaded and one not.
Van de Kamp Microwave 2 Crispy Breaded Large Fish Fillets ($1.99 for 8 ounces, 2 servings) came with a ”microwave crisping pad” that did its job. The fillets (of pollock), covered with nicely browned crumbs, had eye-appeal. They also had good texture and lots of taste, a combination of butter, salt and cereal-like grain. There was an absence of fish flavor, but probably that`s a plus. ”Edible!” I wrote, rebounding from my distressing experience with Mrs. Paul.
Gorton`s Microwave Haddock in Lemon Butter Sauce ($2.99 for 6 ounces, 1 serving) could have been a nostalgia item. Thanks to my Boston-born father`s nostalgia for his boyhood, I came to know Gorton`s codfish cakes very well while growing up and was predisposed to like something that was ”specially made to microwave” and had been ”quality inspected at more than 45 checkpoints.” After preparing it (7 minutes interrupted by one rotation of the container), I decided at least three more checkpoints were needed: one for color (the thin layer of breading was an unappealing pale blond), one for shape (I was confronted by a flat oval that looked stamped out by machine and came garnished with a single blotch of parsley) and one for texture (my fillet, clearly a piece of fish, was as rubbery as microwave chicken.) Often a sauce can mask the shortcomings of fish. Not here. Butter-colored, glutenous and bitter, it wouldn`t even have helped a dried-out codfish cake.
So what did I learn? That`s easy.
I was reminded that everything in life has a price. The cost of saving time, effort and the worry (for me, the fun) of cooking from scratch was to eat food that-with the exceptions noted-ranged from dull to distasteful. In most cases, however, I felt the problem was in the products not the process. So I didn`t throw out my microwave, just those boxes.
