A "Cook" Book by Cabot

For anyone who's ever had to resort to an original concoction because the Harvard University Dining Service offerings were too banal, the Cabot Food Literacy Project may have come up with some creative guidance.

Student cooks and FLP reps in Cabot House have churned out their first-ever Cabot Dining Hall Cookbook chock-full of recipes that can be made with ingredients regularly found in the dining hall.

Armed with such measuring tools as the HUDS teaspoon and the HUDS paper cup, with this recipe book, you too can recreate former award-winning Harvard Top Chef dishes and tasty alternatives with ordinary dining hall ingredients.

But just how tasty are these simplistic formulas to savor? We decided to give one of the recipes a try.

"Baked Apple"

Ingredients: apple, cinnamon/brown sugar, granola

Directions: 1) Slice apple thinly. 2) Microwave 1-2 minutes until soft. 3) Add cinnamon, brown sugar, raisins, and granola—drizzle with honey/maple syrup.

At first, using the table knife to slice the red delicious apple thinly was a task that sounded easy. But the knife wasn't sharp enough to make clean slices, so we ended up with slices that had fuzzy edges.

We left the skin on and microwaved the apple in a yogurt dish on high (power 10) for two minutes. The result was a blemished apple. The dish was very hot.

We mixed the apples with the ingredients into a cereal bowl (so that we could hold it). After much churning, it actually tasted pretty good at the end. Probably a bit too sweet for some tastes (maybe a little less brown sugar?), but a delicious treat nonetheless.

There are many other recipes to try. So find one in a local Cabot dining hall today!

Photograph by Pamela Jimenez Cardenas '13/Crimson Staff Photographer.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: April 7, 2010

An earlier verison of the April 7 post "A 'Cook' Book by Cabot" incorrectly stated that the Cabot House cooking competition was titled "Cabot Iron Chef." In fact, it was called "Harvard Top Chef.