College students are so cute. Ya know, the way they furiously scribble notes in class, cheer their football teams with rabid glee, and do beer bongs and stuff. College kids run on highlighters, cheap beer and even cheaper food.
Kathy Mistretta of the Straub’s Culinary Center has some bizarre and fascinating cooking tips for these young achievers. Turns out, Mistretta has a Ph.D. in the arcane art of dorm-room survival cooking. She’ll be teaching a College Dorm Cooking 101 class on Aug. 4 at the Ellisville Straub’s (6:30 p.m., $10), with advice on making a decent grilled cheese sandwich with an iron, and using Ramen instant noodles in unexpected ways, among other tricks.
Mistretta, who seems to take her cues from Bob The Surreal Gourmet Blumer or MacGyver, explained that you can make a cheese sandwich, butter the outsides, wrap it first in wax paper, and then tin foil, and grill it with an iron and ironing board. “But cover the iron in tin foil, too, to make sure you don’t get butter in it,” she cautioned.
Another trick: crush dry Ramen noodles to make a coating for chicken breasts. Sprinkle with that little high-sodium Ramen flavor packet. Steam Chicken à la Ramen in the microwave, then crisp it with the iron using the above method.
Mistretta promised recipes for dorm-room French onion soup, microwave risotto and something called Hair Dryer Heat-Ups. When the college cafeteria is closed, apparently, not all hope is lost.
The instructor says her daughter, a college student, informed her that “the only thing I use my iron for is to make grilled cheese sandwiches.” And on that note, students at the Straub’s class need to BYOI: Bring your own iron.
– Byron Kerman
This article appears in Jul 1-31, 2009.