What's your perfect last meal?

It's a question from the same realm as fantasizing about what you'd do if you won the lottery. And now it's a book, with answers provided by 50 of the world's greatest chefs.

Melanie Dunea posed six simple questions, asking the greats of the food world to detail the food, drink, setting, music and companions for their final meal. The answers, along with recipes and photos, are collected in "My Last Supper" (Bloomsbury, 2007, $39.95).

Some of the answers are simple (Gordon Ramsay wants roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and red wine gravy) and others are breathtakingly detailed (Jacques Pepin begins a lengthy list with a baguette and ends with crepes and champagne).

This coffee-table book is a fascinating and entertaining read.

Naturally fine

It's hard to imagine a better pitch for healthy eating than Heidi Swanson's "Super Natural Cooking" (Celestial Arts, 2007, $20). Minestrone, soba noodles and tofu kebabs never looked so gorgeous. And Swanson is careful to teach, not preach, her notions about which healthy ingredients to explore and which to avoid. Whole-wheat flour, organic butter, olive oil, natural cane sugars and honey have starring roles in Swanson's cooking. Commercially processed flours, canola oil, margarine and white sugar don't. The results make it hard to argue.

Swanson's Espresso Banana Muffins topped with toasted walnuts, with or without chocolate chips, are substantial, delicious and taste nothing like "healthy" muffins. The Wheat Berry Salad (topped with feta and citrus dressing) has great texture and flavor.

While Swanson's recipes are easy to assemble, her ingredient list may not be. Natural foods stores will have many of the flours, grains and sweeteners she uses. But many people will have trouble finding items such as mesquite flour (made from the pods of the mesquite tree) for the chocolate chip cookies. And if they find them, they likely will be pricey. Swanson acknowledges the challenge of finding and affording some of the ingredients she calls for and encourages readers to make the switch gradually. She intends her cookbook to be a guide to that transition, complete with a reassuring introduction and chapters on cooking by color and exploring natural grains and sweeteners.

Strange tastes

Online bookseller AbeBooks.com recently asked customers to vote for the weirdest cookbooks ever. Who knew that cooking on the engine of your car was stranger than wookiee cookies? The top 10:

1) "Manifold Destiny: The One! The Only! Guide to Cooking on Your Car Engine!" by Chris Maynard and Bill Scheller

2) "The Original Road Kill Cookbook" by Buck Peterson

3) "The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook" by David G. Gordon

4) "Special Effects Cookbook" by Michael E. Samonek (pictured)

5) "Cooking in the Nude: For Playful Gourmets" by Debbie Cornwell and Stephen Cornwell

6) "Cooking to Kill!: The Poison Cook-book:" by Ebenezer Murgatroyd

7) "The Star Wars Cookbook: Wookiee Cookies and Other Galactic Recipes" by Robin Davis

8) "The Mini Ketchup Cookbook" by Cameron Pearl

9) "Cooking for Cats: The Best Recipes for Felix, Orlando and the Rest" by Elisabeth Meyer Zu Stieghorst-Kastrup

10) "Strange Foods: Bush Meat, Bats, and Butterflies: An Epicurean Adventure Around the World" by Jerry Hopkins

Carmel-apple crisp gets an A

Jan D'Atri
Special for The Republic
Mar. 1, 2008 07:03 AM
Well, you can't say we don't go the extra mile, or maybe even pack on a few pounds, for the sake of rescuing your recipes, especially when it involves a gooey apple and caramel crisp with a sweet oat topping!

A noble effort it is, indeed, to laboriously search out these treasured dishes. OK, that's a lie. This is just great fun, foraging through old cookbooks and family stories hoping to piece together one of your best-loved-but-lost recipes.

This week we were put to the test and I think we met the challenge!

Our hunt for this grade school goodie began with this e-mail from Valley resident Isaiah Washington:

Jan, please give me some insight into locating a recipe.

I'm attempting to make an apple-crisp dish similar to what I enjoyed, believe it or not, in the elementary school cafeteria many years ago. The closest dish that I've found is at Denny's Restaurant, caramel-apple crisp.

But I don't know how or where to get the recipe. I am more than three decades removed from those carefree elementary school days.

However, as best I can recall, they were prepared on a long, flat sheet pan, and portions doled out to us kids as we went through the line.

It had a crumbly top, with lots of apples and I think it had some dough inside as well.

Thank you!

Isaiah, we spend hours pouring through mountains of vintage and church cookbooks to find our favorite version of your elementary school craving.

Then, of course, we had to reinforce our findings with a midnight field trip to Denny's. We were now confident we could rescue and reinvent your dish. In the end, our test kitchen with my momma as crew chief, produced a fantastic version. We hope it gets an "A" for awesome!

Elementary School Apple and Caramel Crisp
For the topping:

3/4 cup old fashioned oatmeal, uncooked

1/2 cup butter or margarine (1 cube)

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (preferably freshly grated)

For the filling:

8 cups (about 3 pounds) tart apples, peeled and sliced thin (we used Gala and Granny Smith)

1/2 cup caramel syrup (or ice cream topping)

3 tablespoons flour

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1/2 cup brown sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease or butter a glass or ceramic baking dish (about 13-by-9-by-2). (Do not use an aluminum baking dish.)

In a medium bowl, mix together oats, flour, sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg and butter until ingredients resemble course crumbs.

In another bowl, toss apples with caramel syrup, flour, lemon juice, brown sugar, flour and salt. Spread filling evenly into baking dish. Sprinkle topping over filling. Bake 45-50 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla or cinnamon ice cream.

Got a family kitchen memory or heritage recipe? E-mail me at jan@jandatri.com. Or visit www.jandatri.com.

Watch for Jan's home and lifestyle features from 1 to 2 p.m. every Monday and Thursday on Channel 12's Arizona Midday.

y TONY HOLT, Hernando Today

Published: February 29, 2008

WEEKI WACHEE - The vendors selling Weeki Wachee Swamp Fest cookbooks this weekend have a dual mission.

Not only will they sell all of the 200 remaining books, but they also will collect recipe ideas for the next volume - which is expected to be unveiled next year. "We'll be handing out recipe cards for people to help out with the next edition," said booth organizer Paula Morton. "We'll be working on volume three this year. Next year, we'll have the new book ready."

Morton predicted all copies of the first two volumes would be sold during last year's Swamp Fest, but cold and rainy weather affected the turnout. There are approximately 200 cookbooks remaining. If Saturday's attendance meets expectations, there may not be anymore to sell by Sunday.

The recipes mostly are written by people who live on the water in the Weeki Wachee area. For obvious reasons, many of them are for seafood dishes and appetizers.

There is still quite a variety. There are recipes available for swamp cabbage, venison chili, moose casserole and bear roast.

Bear roast is made with three pounds of meat, six cloves of garlic, celery salt, onions, ground pepper - and two cups of coffee.

"Any roadkill you can think of can be found in this book," Morton said.

The first version of the cookbook was published nine years ago. The second edition was released in 2002. Supplies have lasted longer than expected, but Morton is betting this will be the year everything is sold out. Individual books are sold for $10. People can purchase both for $17.

In addition to recipes, the books also contain local artwork and photography. In years past, Weeki Wachee mermaids would visit the booth to sign autographs.

Reporter Tony Holt can be reached at 352-544-5283 or wholt@hernandotoday.com.