Books for Cooks: Glamour’s new cookbook is pretty tasty

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Updated: September 13, 2011 12:28AM

Glamour magazine headlines typically go something like this: 16 ways to rock purple eye shadow. Or: 20 accessories, one little black dress.

Naturally, the title of the fashion mag’s first cookbook is 100 Recipes Every Woman Should Know: Engagement Chicken and 99 Other Fabulous Dishes to Get Everything You Want in Life (Hyperion, $24.99).

Are there certain recipes every woman and man should know? I think so. Roast chicken, No. 1 in the book, would be at the top of my list, too.

Among Glamour’s staff and at least 70 couples, the recipe is known as Engagement Chicken. As the story goes, a Glamour editor, who had adapted the recipe from the great Marcella Hazan, gave it to an assistant, who made it for her boyfriend, who promptly proposed.

Word got around the office. Three more assistants made the chicken for their boyfriends; all got engaged. The magazine ran the recipe in 2004. Readers made the chicken, and wrote in saying they got engaged. And so on and so forth.

The book goes so far as to list the names of some of those happy couples and their wedding dates. From there, it proceeds as most cookbooks do — with recipes grouped by category (breakfast/brunch, seafood, sides).

Forget the subtext and subtitle for a moment — that by making these 100 dishes, you will get exactly what you want in life, i.e. a man. Try and ignore the bubble-gum pink pages, the high-heel symbols that signify a recipe’s degree of difficulty, the recipe names (Instant Seduction Pork Chops, Let’s Make a Baby Pasta).

What you’re left with, I’m almost ashamed to admit, is a collection of simple, solid dishes and techniques. That baby-making pasta is simply penne arrabiata, and it should be in everyone’s repertoire, Cosmo-drinker or not.

Ditto for pork chops, rubbed with garlic and herbs, set on a double layer of foil and stuck under a hot broiler. And a hulking steak, seared in a raging hot cast iron pan, first on the stove, then in a raging hot oven. And mac ‘n’ cheese not from a box. And at least one stir-fry, one apple pie and one risotto-style dish (which the editors have unfortunately dubbed Easy Peasy Risi e Bisi).

One of my single girlfriends who barely cooked until a few years ago and now enjoys knocking around in the kitchen — though with mixed results — would probably do well with this book.

If it magically nets her a husband, so be it. If it opens her eyes to some basic techniques and gives her a few more dishes to put in rotation, even better.

As for that Engagement Chicken? I’m already spoken for, so its powers are lost on me. But it is indeed one fine roast chicken.