CAN YOU TAKE THE HEAT?: The WWF Is Cooking!

Can You Take the Heat? offers something seldom found in a celebrity cookbook: a WWF-style announcement for each recipe. This is important, both to give the book the raucous flavor so crucial to the entertaining identity of the World Wrestling Federation, and to introduce some of its worthy names that might be unfamiliar to the culinary world. The announcer, Jim "J.R." Ross, gives the personal background of each dish. Thus, Sgt. Slaughter is represented both by the specifics of his Mess Hall Dip (the secret is the 12 ounces of sour cream, "or more if desired") and by Ross's reminiscence about the night he and Sarge shared an $8 room in Baton Rouge and Sarge introduced Ross to a local restaurant's best menu item, Sweet and Sour Chicken. "After a sake or two, Sarge could damn near balance an entire egg roll on his chin!" Sarge orders you to enjoy his dip, and regrets that if he were to yield to the impulse to share with you his secret recipe for Slaughter Steak, he'd be forced "to use the Slaughter Cannon and the Cobra Clutch on you."

Though lots of the entries exist to be silly--you can live without Mick Foley's Knuckle Sandwich recipe--the book isn't just a gag. You really can make J.R.'s Slobberknocker Pork Chops and Stone Cold Steve Austin's "Stomp a Mud Hole in Your Steaks and Ribs" Simmering Sauce. Do try this at home, folks!