Cooking for college kids

As an 11-year-old, my first online instant messenger screen name was ChefAmy7. Nine years later, I've long since ditched my early dream of becoming a chef. As a Louisiana State University junior, my average weekday meal usually consists of whatever I can pick up and consume in less than 30 minutes.

When the Monitor asked me to test a new cookbook for college students by throwing a dinner party, I readily accepted the challenge. Amy Madden's "Look, Dude, I Can Cook!: Four Years of College Cooking Made Easy" served as the inspiration for my voyage into the kitchen.

I spoke with Ms. Madden by phone just hours before my guests (who would also serve as assistant chefs) were to arrive. We discussed the culinary ability of the average college student.

"Kids today are definitely more interested in cooking than when I was in college," Madden said. "You've got all these cooking shows on now since the Food Network [launched]. I think kids are becoming more and more interested in cooking and finding out that it's really not that difficult. You can make it as difficult or easy as you want it to be."

Madden says there's a potential cook in every student, but the challenge remains in finding time or money to hone one's skills. She says when a student arrives on campus as a freshman, he or she may fall into bad culinary habits that become difficult to break.

"Having the time is essential, and so is having the right utensils and pantry items," she says.

Madden's recipes are split into four levels: freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. As you'd expect, the recipes get more difficult as you progress through the book.

I told her I was planning to test her recipes with several friends later that evening. She recommended cornflake-crusted chicken fingers, Caprese salad, mashed potatoes, and chocolate brownies. I decided to make an executive chef decision and substitute the twice-baked cheese potatoes for the garlic mashed potatoes.

With just a few hours to prepare, I headed to the supermarket with one goal: Get in and out as quickly as possible.

Madden's cookbook is generally easy to follow and uses ingredients found on most supermarket shelves. Oddly, on just about every aisle I was approached by workers asking if I needed assistance. I guess holding a "Look, Dude, I Can Cook!" book was the equivalent of a distress signal.

As I was scouring various bags of flour in the baking aisle, I asked a worker about the difference between two types of flour. He, in return, asked what I would be baking. "Brownies," I said. Without missing a beat, he pointed down the aisle and declared, "Why would you make brownies when you could just buy them in the box kits? They're all over there." My thoughts exactly. But I stuck to my recipe and threw a bag of all-purpose flour in the shopping cart.

It was 7:15 p.m. by the time everyone gathered in my kitchen, ready to cook. Four cooks in the kitchen (all sharing one cookbook!) proved to be a bit cramped. I assigned each friend a recipe at their professed skill level. The most advanced of our crew, senior Arman Sheybani, took the stuffed-potato recipe, while less-experienced junior Lauren Coe prepared the cornflake-crusted chicken. .

"I didn't really cook at all when I was a freshman because it was too inconvenient living in a dorm," says Mr. Sheybani. "After moving into an apartment, my sophomore year, I cooked about every two weeks. My junior year I cooked about once a week, but normally it was chicken and pasta."

Sheybani's favorite culinary creation: stuffed salmon with ricotta cheese, spinach, and mushrooms. Grill it, he says, for a nutritious and easy midweek meal.

His twice-baked potatoes were easily the most highly rated dish of the evening, but a few improvisations were made along the way. An overeager cook dumped the whole bag of grated cheese on top of the potatoes while declaring: "A little cheese never hurt anyone!" We all agreed it was divine.

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