Remembering the wonders of the wave

"Chips, chicken nuggets, and pasta are all you can really cook without an oven," she says, despairlingly.

And there speaks a lady who never subscribed to Microwave Know How.

You remember, the weekly magazine from Marshall Cavendish which promised to turn you into a hi-tech Delia Smith in the time it took to say 'ping'. Back in the 1980s you couldn't get through an episode of Fresh Fields or The Price is Right without it being interrupted by the infuriatingly catchy jingle that began with a bored microwave whining about heating pizza every day, and ended with the jaunty promise that you would soon be "Chinese roasting, pasta baking, lemon-pudding baking, caking."

And if you committed to buying it every week, you could then buy some vinyl binders to neatly arrange them in your Schreiber bookcase, above your complete works of Shakespeare. To be honest, I was more of a What Car? man, but each to their own and all that.

Anyhow, I've just been browsing the first edition of Microwave Know How, and it provides a fascinating insight into the culinary landscape of 1985.

And it certainly gives the lie to Miss Murphy's idea that having to live out of your microwave restricts your diet to processed meat and ready meals.

For example, if Sophie had read "Choose Chicken" in the meat-and-poultry section, she would never have touched a chicken nugget again. I mean, why would you, when it is so easy to roast a whole chicken? Top tip: to help it brown perfectly, mix together equal parts of melted butter and soy sauce, and brush it onto the chicken skin before blasting it on maximum power.

And the possibilities with chicken are almost endless. How about casserole chicken, Italian chicken, exotic chicken or braised chicken? You need never taste a Bernard Matthews again.

Or if Sophie wanted to channel her inner Beverley out of Abigail's Party, the Easy Entertaining section provides excellent tips on "wholesome family supper" and "chocolate ice cream cake". It is possible to put a “party-style dinner on the table in less than an hour”.

And if that does not whet the appetite, ponder the thought of an orange endive salad, wine-poached fish, fruit compote and lemon broccoli. All courtesy of the 600-watt Kenwood. There are also tips on how to perform something called "shielding", which had nothing to do with staying at home if you suffered from Covid, but was actually about using tinfoil to prevent parts of your giant turkey from getting overcooked. With a disclaimer to check the manufacturer's instruction on your microwave, unless you wanted your kitchen to go up in flames.

This, of course was the time when microwave cooking was not seen as a lazy short-cut, but as the height of metropolitan sophistication. Just as 10 years earlier, people would boast about reaching into their giant Electrolux chest freezer to fish out some Findus Crispy pancakes, followed by Wall's Viennetta or Arctic Roll sprinkled with hundreds and thousands. And if you had a Ronco Vegomatic potato peeler as well, take a bow.

The problem with Microwave Know How, and the countless publications and television programmes which have taken its place over the 37 years that followed, is that they all assume we have a taste for the exotic. That we really would love to eat creamy Parmesan garlic mushroom chicken painted with mushroom and soy sauce if only we had the knowledge. But many of us are simple creatures who believe the plainer the better. It's the same with the Sunday Times' guide to "Painless ways to get your five a day", which frankly terrified the life out of me. Speaking as someone who has spent the past five years trying to crack the "painless ways to get your five a day" conundrum, I have come to the conclusion that the least pain is endured when you smother your vegetables with sauce so you can't taste them.

But back to the matter in hand. If Sophie Murphy really is finding her cookery options limited by a forced dependency on non-ionising radiation, then there seems to be a growing market in old back copies of Microwave Know How circulating on the internet. Indeed, they even seem to on the verge of becoming collectors' items, with one seller offering a mint set of bound volumes for a cool £127.73.

Although it's probably cheaper to get the cooker fixed.