This 1993 IndyCar Cookbook Is A Banquet Of Midwest Culinary Delights

I absolutely adore everything about the process of cooking (aside from cleaning up), and I've been on a recent kick where I try to somehow combine my love of motorsport with that love of cuisine. That has primarily manifested in Grand Prix Gastronomy, a cooking series I host that runs alongside the Formula 1 calendar — but I've been hungry for some home-grown dishes. That's why I ordered a copy of Champions: Favorite Foods of Indy Car Racing from eBay.

Longtime Jalopnik readers might recognize this cookbook; that's because I first wrote about it back in 2021, after I pulled it from a shelf at the International Motor Racing Research Center in Watkins Glen. I was compelled by it then, and I remain compelled by it now — enough so that I thought it's high time I put together some of these dishes for you fine readers here.

But wow, some of these recipes are just... well, if you grew up in the American midwest, or in any other rural area of the USA, then these dishes will probably seem a little familiar. Let's delve in.

I don't know if you're all familiar with middle_child_sam on TikTok, but this user has a series called "How long until they put the cream cheese into the crock pot recipe?" Sam duets videos of folks making crock pot recipes and ends the video when someone puts a whole block of cream cheese into the crock pot.

Imagine my surprise when I opened this cookbook to find three blocks of cream cheese as the very first ingredient of the very first recipe. I wish I was kidding. I am not.

Part of me wonders if Paul Newman himself actually submitted this recipe, or if it came directly from Paul Newman's press representative. Either way, I'm a little disturbed by the concept of a salad-dressing marinated sirloin.

Every Sunday for many years, I ate dinner at my grandparents' house. It was generally an absolute blessing, since my grandma loved cooking and had a great repertoire of delightful Michigander dishes at hand. But every year, I dreaded the summer, when her garden full of zucchini demanded a harvest, because we'd end up with zucchini in everything. Zucchini stir fry. Zucchini pasta. Zucchini lasagna. Zucchini pizza. I hate zucchini and its tendency to make everything watery; this recipe for a zucchini casserole made me viscerally shudder.

First of all, I don't know when segments of the population started washing their raw meat before cooking, but Jim Chapman commits this sin with a recipe he stole from the wife of a Detroit Pistons coach. He also proceeds to whip up a frankly wild foil-wrapped baked chicken recipe, which I cannot say inspires confidence with its measurement-less ingredients list.

Truly nothing says "rural America" like a hearty venison steak. This recipe right here is how I know Mario Andretti fully assimilated.

My mom, who hails from Michigan, makes a very similar dish. We call it enchilada casserole. The Voglers call it tamale pie. It's a sin either way.

Anyone who asks me to pour 16 ounces of dairy over my enchilada (singular, for some reason) will inevitably bring pain to my soul.

At its heart, the Battersby recipe for Mexican muffins actually sounds great as it's essentially a play on cornbread. What brings me pause, however, is stirring half a cup of taco sauce right into the wet ingredients?????

I can't tell you how stoked I was to see a recipe titled "chocolate eclair cake." That shit sounds delightful. I cannot tell you how disappointed I was to find it's basically an icebox cake.

Please, why are we putting so much mayonnaise in our Mexican dishes? And what on earth is longhorn cheese?

Every holiday, my grandma made something called "fruit salad." It was a bunch of chopped up fruit, mixed with marshmallows and covered in Cool Whip. I thought it was about as far as anyone could get from a "salad," until I discovered A. J. Shepherd's cherry salad recipe, which uses a whole-ass 21-ounce can of syrupy cherry pie filling.

I'm sorry, Eddie Cheever. I just don't like the sound of this.

We're ending on a very perplexing note, with a beef roast recipe courtesy of Neil Diamond, for some reason. Yes, that Neil Diamond. I don't hate the idea of this roast, but putting ketchup on top of it feels unholy.