College students get recipes for success

SOUTH HADLEY -- The Mount Holyoke College seniors eye Chef Jeff Sadowski hesitantly as he organizes tomatoes and onions on a clean cutting board. Despite Sadowski's efforts to offer ordinary supermarket ingredients in small quantities, instead of the quantity cooking he's used to, the seniors seem tentative. Giant colanders hang overhead; the chef's 10-inch knife gleams.

''Anyone know what a salad spinner is?" asks the chef. A bashful silence follows.

The eight seniors are taking part in Mount Holyoke's ''Passport to Reality" series, which is offered to graduating seniors during January term between semesters. Those who participate receive friendly coaching on life skills critical to a smooth entry into the ''real" world: How to fix your car, manage finances, dress for a job interview -- and cook. Sadowski, who has written three cookbooks and manages Mount Holyoke's main dining hall, teaches the hour-long cooking segment.

Sadowski is a familiar figure in Mount Holyoke's dining scene. ''Everbody on campus knows Chef Jeff," says senior Sarah Knowlton. In the cafe at Blanchard dining hall, where he runs the kitchen, the chef typically serves 1000 students a day. Today's class members have trudged through the snow in jeans and sweats. Will what they learn rescue them from a life of bagels and ramen?

''I have a pretty good idea what you guys like," says the chef, in a part-conspiratorial, part-hopeful tone. Sadowski, a self-described carb-lover, lays out pasta, rice, tortillas, beans, and vegetables on his counter. It's as if three years of national carbophobia never happened -- and on this wintry campus, perhaps itnever did. Later, Sadowski praises the virtues of carbohydrates for young professionals: ''When they graduate, they realize that carbs are cheap, they're good, they're nutritious."

Sadowski knows that his students study around the clock. His dining hall is open ''from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m., and we're busy the whole time. These kids are on the go, they want to eat something that's like their lifestyle." With that in mind, he chose to demonstrate dishes that would be quick, easy to prepare, and complete in themselves.

One hour isn't a long time, but Sadowski managed to make quesadillas, cavatelli with meat sauce, pasta e fagioli (pasta with beans), and fried rice -- with a few shortcuts. Preparing the meat sauce as if it were an express Bolognese sauce, he explained that adding milk flavors and tenderizes the meat. Only day-old rice will work for fried rice because the grains will not remain dry and separate otherwise. And his quick tips? The chef extolled the virtues of Campbell's tomato soup in preparing the pasta to mix with beans. It only requires a little ''jazzing up," he says, to masquerade as the traditionally slow-cooked favorite.

As the dishes emerged, it looked as though Sadowski's instincts were right. The women devoured the quesadilla. They polished off the cavatelli equally eagerly and sampled the fried rice. Only the pasta e fagioli went untouched, despite Sadowski's insistence that ''beans are your friends." Whether the women objected to the taste or difficulty of preparation was unclear. But until their budgets actually start dictating the grocery list, the humble beans seem headed for neglect.

The seniors remained quiet and respectful for most of the demonstration, though they offered admiring comments when the chef tossed fried rice dexterously in a skillet. At the end, they peppered him with questions: How do you keep pasta from sticking? Rinse it under cold water after cooking, he says (which would make modern Italians cringe), then reheat it in sauce. Has brown sugar gone bad when it hardens? Just break it with a mallet. (Some bakers like to microwave it with a slice of bread.) Do you ever get tired of cooking? No, answers Sadowski, who loves cooking for his family at the end of a long day.

Afterward, Almut Ellwanger was pleased. She explained that most of her peers don't know much about cooking. ''Our moms all cook at home," she says, adding that sometimes frozen pizza was served as a fallback. ''I never thought of substituting ground turkey," for beef in the meat sauce, she says, which she had just learned about, ''and I enjoyed all the fresh herbs." She thought she might try out some of the dishes with friends that evening in the shared student kitchen.

Sara Knowlton was ''hoping for more dessert in there," she says. ''But I will make the quesadilla. I like the idea of the double layer of tortillas."

Sadowski describes Mount Holyoke students as ''neither more nor less knowledgeable about cooking than the general population of women their age." But one thing is certain: Their hour with the chef will bolster their confidence entering the kitchens of independent life, one quesadilla at a time.