Cooking in College Cookbook Review: $5 a Meal College Cookbook

There were good intentions behind "The $5 a Meal College Cookbook," but these recipes make ramen sound awesome. They're heavy on canned, processed foods, powdered mixes and ersatz flavorings at a time when even college cafeterias are putting the focus on fresh, organic cuisine. Some of the dishes are just bizarre. And the dollar and nutritional counts on some recipes contain errors. Pick a different cookbook for your college kid. (But if you want to know why I'm dissing this one, read on...)

Apparently this is what happens when a cookbook publisher takes a decent cookbook - "The Everything College Cookbook" - and tries to give it a new spin, without actually involving the original author. The "$5 a Meal College Cookbook" (Adams Media 2010, 234 pp) is presented as a new book, with 300 alternatives to dining hall food. But the result is considerably less than the sum of its parts - and some parts are simply ghastly.

Some recipes are geared toward the newbiest of newbie cooks - how to boil rice, for example, or steam broccoli. I have quibbles with the cooking times - the broccoli and white rice will be overcooked, and the baked potato and brown rice dishes still crunchy. But it's a reminder to all of us home cooks and food and wine editors (which is what I am, when I'm not wearing my About.com hat) that beginners need those basics, as well as recipes for more interesting things. It's just that here, some of those "more interesting things" are downright bizarre.

The heavy reliance on canned foods, powdered mixes and ersatz flavorings makes for odd reading now at a time when even college dining halls are touting their fresh, organic and ethnic approaches to healthful cooking - again, this is what happens when a publisher takes 2005 material and slaps a 2010 publication date on it. Food tastes have changed considerably. A Microwave Borscht, for example, nukes canned beets and bouillon cubes to arrive at a soup that will horrify any college kid of Eastern European or Russian descent. I don't even know what to say about the Mock Oyster Stew, whose main ingredient is canned mushrooms, or the Easy Onion Soup au Gratin for One, which consists of instant onion soup mix, a slice of bread and Cheddar cheese microwaved into hot submission. As for the Budget Beef Liver and Onions, that one could get your kid banned from the dorm communal kitchen forever. All of a sudden, ramen noodles sound awesome.

Here's the really odd part. You've got budget recipes like the ones mentioned above and a variety of others calling for canned turkey, canned oysters and dried parsley. But flip the pages and you find ... Veal Medallions aux Champignons, which calls for veal medallions, shallots, fresh mushrooms, dried porcini mushrooms, capers, Marsala wine and 1 fresh black truffle. First, that's some haute cuisine. It's billed as something to serve when parents come visiting - and indeed it's parent-y fare. But the publisher claims this dinner, which serves 4, costs $4.49 per serving. In my neck of the woods, the truffle alone will set you back $55. Perhaps truffles grow in your backyard, but I don't have truffle-sniffing pigs and a bois out back.

In any case, a discrepancy as outrageous as that makes me cast a wary eye at every other claim in the book, from the expenses to the sodium counts. Justifiably, as it turns out. The Mock Oyster Stew mentioned above is supposed to have 570 mg. of sodium, according to this re-vamp. (The original book said nothing of the sort.) Actually, it has 1,391 per serving. It would have less with low-sodium chicken stock, but the recipe didn't ask for that. Moreover, canned mushrooms have 780 mg. of sodium per can and fresh ... don't.

There are a lot of great cookbooks out there for college-age kids and 20somethings. I'm sorry, but this isn't one of them.

Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.