C’mon, admit it. Your freshman year was a haze of pizza, late night Whataburger, egg rolls from that cart on Guadalupe that got busted for fencing stolen goods, free frat party beer and carb-heavy cafeteria food. You heated up microwave “butter flavor” popcorn and ate Hot Pockets washed down with energy drinks in all night study sessions. Unless you were on a Track & Field scholarship, you fought unsuccessfully against gaining weight. If you were lucky, you befriended a student who lived off campus in an apartment with a real kitchen, but even then it was used mainly to heat up frozen pizzas and lasagnas. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have a cookbook of easy, tasty and health-conscious recipes that you could cook up in your dorm or apartment?
Chef Nisa Burns thinks so, too. Her cookbook Kitchenability 101: The College Student’s Guide to Easy, Healthy and Delicious Food has moved to the top of my list for gifts for high school graduates. Recipes come with full color photos, easy step-by-step instructions (seriously, most recipes require less than 10 steps to make), and don’t require you to track down obscure specialty ingredients. Chef Nisa includes QR codes for helpful videos, such as “How to chop an onion” and includes icons denoting which recipes can be made in your dorm, and those that are best for apartment kitchens.
Happily, the cookbook doesn’t try to dumb down more intricate dishes. Instead, it offers up recipes made from a handful of ingredients, showcasing flavors while still remaining easy enough for a kitchen novice to accomplish. Which is, in fact, the point and purpose of the book. Would you choose a dry cafeteria bagel over Nutella French Toast made in your dorm room, by yourself (or a roomie) while still in comfy pajamas? Yes, please! I have my eye on a few recipes and you can bet the Gnocchi with Pesto, Chunky Chicken Chili, and Pumpkin Muffins will be showing up on my dining room table soon. This cookbook doesn’t stop at dessert, though. There’s plenty of goodness to be found in the Party! Party! section, including non-alcoholic and full octane alcoholic cocktails. I’ll be pouring one shortly, amusingly named The Chelsea Handler.
This weekend Chef Nisa will be out at the SFC Farmer’s Market at Sunset Valley at 10am on January 19, signing books and sharing tips for cooking in a small kitchen and on a small budget. Later that same day, find her at Central Market Cooking School for a demo and signing. For a chance to win your own copy of the Kitchenability 101 cookbook, follow this link: a Rafflecopter giveaway
Good luck!
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