cover image The One-Burner Cookbook

The One-Burner Cookbook

Mary Beth Jung. Collier Books, $12.95 (218pp) ISBN 978-0-02-009850-8

What are the benefits of one-burner cooking? Certainly minimal mess, a dearth of dirty dishes and a cuisine adaptable to hotel rooms. However, there aren't too many other reasons to limit oneself to a one-burner stove, and these recipes are no incentive, either. With the exception of the predictable omelet, most dishes here seem to be derived from the ""open-a-can-of-cream-of-mushroom-soup'' school. Quick chicken divan, for example, calls for cream of chicken soup, cream of mushroom soup, frozen broccoli, jarred pimento, prepared pastry shells and cubed, cooked chicken straight from the deli. Even the most appetizing recipes heresuch as shrimp with herbed tomato sauce, seafood gumbo, no-bake cornbread or poached pears in cognacare still exercises in culinary cleverness rather than creative theories put into practice. Foreign rights: Raines & Raines. (November)