Manifold Destiny: The One! The Only! Guide to Cooking on Your Car Engine!
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How many miles does it take to braise a fish fillet? Should you use your exhaust manifold or your valve cover for a pork tenderloin? Were Jaguars really designed with veal scallopini in mind?
In the new revised and expanded Manifold Destiny, Chris Maynard and Bill Scheller, two experienced rally drivers--and cooks--answer these and any other questions you've got about cooking under the hood. After all, why drive to a diner when you can turn your Chevy into one, especially when you can make a better meal right on top of your engine? With a little bit of ingenuity--and a whole lot of aluminum foil--you can whip up dishes like Cutlass Cod Supreme, Cruise-Control Pork Tenderloin, Nifty NAFTA Nachos, Donner Pass Red Flannel Hash, and Fupped Duck Catera.
Witty, preposterous, and great highway fun, the more than forty recipes in this cult classic are road-tested and taste-bud-approved. It's a must for anyone hitting the road with an empty stomach and a full tank of gas.
Customer Review: Out of Date, Out of Mind
I was given Manifold Destiny in the early 1990s for a college graduation gift because my friends knew that I was going to travel a lot (and did) by car. It was a hilarious read and I enjoyed it. However, unlike the majority of reviewers here, I actually TRIED a bunch of recipes. Folks, I'm here to tell you that your results aren't as good as the read. I even secured the efforts of a couple of truckers (who had years of experience cooking food on their engines) and found out that newer cars are better insulated, making cooking anywhere on their engines mighty difficult. Not to mention that everything is STEAMED. Got that? You know what my steak with mushrooms looked like 4 hours after being attached near the hot part of the engine block? Disgusting and undercooked. Chicken wasn't much better. Steamed vegetables weren't ever completely done no matter where they were placed. I tested this in 8 different states (including Hawaii) and 4 different vehicles. My college buddy did try fish in a Chevy truck on the way to Montana. That seemed to work well, but the flavor was not that great. Manifold Destiny was a great idea whose time has passed. I'll stick to wayside stops and my campstove, thank you.
Customer Review: If Alton Brown's not geeky enough for you...
To look at the prices being charged for used copies of this book is a somewhat frightening experience, because it makes quite obvious that Manifold Destiny is something of an unrecognized culinary classic when people will pay $50 and up for a paperback. But I tell ya something, for the truly hardcore kitchen geek, the same sort of person who might try cooking with lava or a bunsen burner, this would make an incredibly thoughtful present. One can only hope there's a third edition in the pipeline for sometime in the next couple of years.
This book is about cooking in your car, and also eating in your car. That's important, because it gives some nice information on a lot of unusual regional specialties around the United States and Canada (including Michigan's now-famous pasties and Binghamton, NY's spiedies, as well as the legendary smoked meat from Schwartz's Deli in Montreal). It's a nice little hors d'oeuvre for the food tourist.
But there's also lots of good information about cooking on car engines, which is what you came to this review to find out about in the first place, right? Maynard and Scheller talk about all kinds of concerns -- finding the best place on your engine block to secure a packet of food, what kind of aluminum foil to use (and how much -- triple layers), and even a whole bunch of recipes based on American regional cuisine, from traditional Italian like uova in purgatorio to nouvelle-inspired dishes like Thruway Thighs (a stuffed chicken dish). While the info on reviewing cars for their suitability as cookstoves is rather dated, there's still a lot of good information on a rather silly subject.
So find this book for someone very special who loves doing interesting things in the kitchen. They will appreciate it very much.