On Your Mark, Get Set, Cook! Teen Cuisine Book Review

With three teenage boys in my house, including my oldest who is going off to college in the fall, I have been encouraging my boys to learn to cook some of their favorite foods. Cooking really isn’t that difficult, and anyone who masters a few simple techniques can learn to make a variety of dishes. Although my kids would rather heat something up in the toaster oven or microwave, I’m happy they’ll have a few cooking skills under their belt before they fly the coup. Besides, I tell them that their future wives will love it if they can cook. It’s really impressive (at least I think so!).

Matthew Locricchio’s Teen Cuisine cookbook is just over 200 pages, and contains over 50 recipes, ranging from simple, quick and easy recipes like Red Salsa to more complicated, multi-step recipes like Chicken Pot Pie using homemade pastry. Accompanying many of Chef Locricchio’s recipes are large eye-popping photographs by award winning photographer James Peterson.

All of Chef Locricchio’s recipes call for whole ingredients – you won’t find any recipes using cream of mushroom soup. Chef Locricchio encourages teens to get into the kitchen and cook, using the best ingredients they can afford, including local and organic ingredients. He discourages readers from using “mystery ingredients, partially hydrogenated oils, and the unpronounceable chemicals that are part of packaged or prepared foods.” In addition to all the recipes in this cookbook, Chef Locricchio includes a section on general cooking safety, knife safety, kitchen ingredient essentials (including anchovies, arugula, radicchio, buckwheat and spelt flour, not your typical teenage fare), a metric conversion chart, and illustrations of kitchen equipment and utensils.

Chef Locricchio’s cookbook tries to reach a broad audience, from the novice teenager cook to the more experienced. He doesn’t dumb down cooking, but instead attempts to engage teenagers of all skill levels, and tantalize the taste buds of more sophisticated palates.

The recipes in Teen Cuisine are organized by course and several highlighted categories:

• Brilliant Breakfasts
• Snacks and Co-Stars
• Celebrity Soups
• Star-Studded Salads and Dressings
• Sandwich and Burger Show Stoppers
• Pizza Coast To Coast
• Side Shows
• Shooting Star Entrees
• Red-Carpet Desserts

I’ve found the best way to review a cookbook is to select a handful of recipes, cook them, and then conduct a taste testing (my favorite part!). For this cookbook review, I asked my boys to choose a few recipes that appealed to them, and was not one bit surprised to see that The Playland Ice Cream Sandwich was among them – what teenager wouldn’t want a chocolate drenched ice cream cookie sandwich for dessert! To round out the recipe testing, I chose a variety of other dishes, based on difficulty level, including Red Bread, Crisp Oven Fries, and Stuyvesant Corn and Potato Chowder. The Red Bread, featured on the front cover of Teen Cuisine, received rave reviews from my teenage boys.

Article Author: Jeanette's Healthy Living

I am passionate about healthy healing foods, foods that can fight cancer, reverse heart disease, and prevent other illnesses. I believe certain cancers, heart disease and other illnesses can be avoided and reversed by eliminating all processed foods, and eating a diet rich in whole foods. …

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