Reposted from alt.tv.simpsons
http://www.usatoday.com/life/enter/books/b623.htm
08/19/98- Updated 09:18 AM ET
The joy of engine-top cooking
GARDEN STATE PARKWAY, N.J. - Bill Scheller and Chris Maynard are cruising the highway in a rented red Chrysler convertible. The top is down. The sky is clear blue. Scheller is doing 65. Maynard is resting his bare feet on the dash. These guys are cooking.
Literally.
Veal Rollatini Calabrese alla Passegiata is baking under the hood. Foil-wrapped packages of raw scalloped veal stuffed with creamy mozzarella and Italian pancetta are lined up on the fuel-injection housing. A coil of pink Luganica sausage is next to it. The meats are snug, buckled in with a rope of tinfoil. By the time Scheller and Maynard get to the shore, their lunch should be ready.
Theirs is a different sort of meals on wheels.
Scheller and Maynard are the authors of Manifold Destiny: The One! The Only! Guide to Cooking on Your Car Engine! They got a lot of attention when Destiny came out in 1989. There was, it turned out, a strong niche market for people who wanted to cook as they drove and, perhaps, an even stronger one for folks who wanted to laugh at people who would do such a thing. Now the men are on the road again. The new Manifold Destiny (Villard, $9.95) updates the classic, explains the modern (your sports-utility vehicle as a stove) and embraces the hip (Orange Roughy Floribbean and a roast pork/pineapple tortilla wrap).
The things that made Destiny memorable - recipes like cilantro-flavored Melrose Avenue Chicken - remain.
Scheller and Maynard are men of big ideas and great experiments. They are men who take their food seriously. And they are funny. The notion of using the engine as a stove came to them in 1984 when, on the way back from a Canadian canoe trip, Scheller and Maynard stopped in Montreal, a city "where smoked meat is almost a religion," Scheller says.
As part of their pilgrimage and to fortify themselves on the drive back, they loaded up on meat but later found it "was better hot than cold," Scheller says. "We said, 'Let's get some foil and heat the smoked meat up in the engine.' "
The old truckers' trick worked so well that the men then tried for greater greatness. When Scheller, a Vermont-based travel writer, and Maynard, a photographer living in New York, were assigned to cover an almost 8,000-mile car rally, they decided to do it in style, eating engine-cooked gourmet while their competition wasted valuable lap time at the McDonald's drive-through.
It is still a happy memory. "We were driving along at 90 mph. Somebody else was paying for gas, and we're eating pork tenderloin," Maynard says.
Scheller wrote about their success. People saw his story and interviewed them. A publisher saw the magazine and offered the guys a book contract. Maynard was initially unsure.
"I kept saying, 'This is stupid,' " he remembers. "Then I realized: This is America. It's just stupid enough."
They decided their book wouldn't be about teaching old hot dogs new tricks. The men were the first on their engine block to use fennel.
The recipes reflect the author's roots. Scheller grew up in Paterson, N.J., a splendidly diverse city with a bakery on almost every block and a hundred kinds of cheeses in the regular grocery store.
Though Paterson isn't on the way to the beach, the men detoured to buy veal, cheese, a loaf of still-hot semolina bread and the aluminum foil that is the foundation of their cooking system. In Maynard's duffel bag are knives, a pounder and a small jar of minced pancetta he saut�ed before leaving home. There are things an engine isn't good for.
The recipe calls for the veal to cook for 75 miles. Give or take.
"You have to be very flexible," Maynard says. He is sitting on a bench outside a park overlooking the Great Falls of the Passaic River, pounding veal.
How do you know when your engine's hot enough to cook? "You either use your common sense, or you touch it and see how hot it is, depending on how bad a burn you get," Maynard says.
He touches it.
There are tricks to their trade. Some cars are better than others.
"The 1988 Toyota Camry has the most variety and spaces to tuck things into," Scheller says, recalling a drive when they cooked chicken thighs, Cornish hens and baked apples. "And the Jag XKE has a beautiful spot to lay a pork tenderloin along the valve cover."
they've tried, Scheller says.
Beware, they say, of plastic parts. "Plastic never gets hot enough," Scheller explains. The space between the engine and the hood varies from car to car. The solution: Put a 5-inch-high foil cone on the spot where you intend to put the food. Then drop the hood. Maynard demonstrates, reopens the hood and finds the cone is now a blob about an inch and a half high, which, measured against a packet of rolled veal, seems just about right.
The authors warn that the cone test is key. "If you screw this up, you're either going to squash everything or it will be too loose and it'll fall out," Scheller says.
"I did lose a chicken breast once when I was driving from New York to Philly," Maynard says.
"I've lost jobs," says Scheller, smiling. "I've lost clients."
"And mental abilities," Maynard says.
"But never food," Scheller says.
Once a police officer approached them in a parking lot, wanting to know what they were doing. They reached under the hood and gave him a trout.
Scheller and Maynard take to the highway with the comfortable ease of people who have logged a lot of miles together. The men have been friends for 22 years.
The beach-bound car is now a moving crock-pot. The chefs pass the miles trading jokes, dickering over past routes and past successes, pondering their favorite recipes. For Maynard, the primo meal is "boned chicken thighs stuffed with leeks and oysters." (Cooking time: 50-200 miles.)
Scheller disagrees. "I think it's one of the pork tenderloins."
Both men roll their eyes at the most commonly asked question: What are the chances that this food will come out basted in carbon monoxide and I will eat it and die?
"Carbon monoxide goes out the tailpipe," Maynard says. "If it's under the hood, you're never going to live long enough to eat the food."
"Your engine is much more likely to smell like food than your food to smell like the engine," Scheller says.
"One toll taker in Baltimore noticed the garlic smell," Maynard says. .
There is one drawback to their method. "You pass a really interesting-looking (restaurant), and you can't stop because you have already committed to what's on the engine," Scheller says.
Sixty miles later, the men are at the beach. Maynard pulls out china plates and no-iron napkins, and the veal is served.
And it is very good.
The sausage, however, is undercooked. It doesn't matter. Scheller pops it back under the hood. By the time he gets home, he's hungry, and it's cooked. "Eight hours on the engine, and it was just fine," Scheller says.
Throw another shrimp on the manifold.
By Katy Kelly, USA TODAY