Suspicion crept in as I poured half a bottle of ranch into a saucepan and turned the stove up to medium heat.

My friends were 15 minutes away, and the fate of our dinner was resting in Karl Malone's hands. More specifically, the fate of our first course was resting in the hands of Karl Malone's recipe for hot crab salad.

The dish—and all the other courses I had spent several hours preparing—came from a cookbook created in 1992 by the wives of the Utah Jazz coaches, its executives and players, which I bought at Goodwill for a few dollars.

When I embarked on my foray into the Goodwill cookbook section, I was hoping to find a copy of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking or maybe something from Cook's Illustrated. But fate led me through the dusty shelves to a different culinary experience altogether.

The book I pulled down, spiral bound with purple plastic, held recipes from Jazz greats like Malone, John Stockton, and head coach Jerry Sloan. It was put together by Gail Miller herself. Only 5,000 copies were ever made and I held a pristine one—its pages free of grease splatters and buttery fingerprints—in my hands.

I decided to purchase the book and try a few of the recipes. Maybe their cooking was the secret to the Jazz's '90s success.

Perhaps the most stunning recipe was contributed by Jerry Sloan, who recounted journeying to a lake in his native southern Illinois with a friend to "retrieve a 15 to 20 pound turtle." After removing the meat from the shell (Sloan declined to explain how to do this and whether the turtle should be dead or alive at this point), the meat is rolled in flour, fried until brown and baked at 350 until tender.

Unfortunately, the Jordan River is only home to one species of turtle, the invasive Red-Eared Slider, which averages around seven pounds—far too small for Coach Sloan's turtle feast. Without it, the dinner menu I selected was four courses.

I warned my dinner guests in advance that some of the recipes seemed suspicious—two involved heating meat in the microwave—but I was committed to cheffing up an authentic Utah Jazz meal.

We started the evening with an appetizer from the kitchen of Frank Layden, who coached the Jazz from 1981 to 1988 and then became the team's president. Layden's "pizza"—which according to the book, he "really did cook"—was slightly disappointing to eat at 7 p.m.

Made with toasted english muffins and pizza sauce from a squeeze bottle, it would have been a more appropriate dish for a drunken 1 a.m. snack.

Karl "The Mailman" Malone's hot crab salad, on the other hand, exceeded expectations. The ranch, mixed with cheddar cheese and heated, was poured over chopped lettuce, boiled eggs, cucumber and raisins.

I expected the "hot" in the title to mean spicy, given that Malone's other recipes were cajun-inspired. But in fact, his salad was finished with microwaved crab flakes.

Heating ranch on the stove may have stoked fear in my dinner guests and me, but all agreed that it was better than anticipated—although there was only one taker for seconds.

Out of caution, I prepared two entrees. The first was a safe option: John Stockton's mother's lasagna. There was another recipe for lasagna in the book contributed by the Italian wife of a lesser known player that looked better, but Stockton's mother's recipes came with a note that intrigued me: "This is what John grew up with! Try these with your children."

Could this recipe make me the next John Stockton? It did not. I remain 5'4" and bad at basketball. On the bright side, I also did not become a vaccine skeptic.

Based on taste alone, and not any promised powers of transformation, the lasagna was only okay. A recipe without Chef Boyardee and cottage cheese would probably have been a better choice.

The other entree was a risk. Gail Miller's Fiesta Chicken Kiev had all of the elements for disaster: MSG, cheddar cheese crackers, Old English-style cheese spread and the microwave.

It directed me to coat flattened chicken breasts in a mixture of the cheese spread, butter, MSG, and green chiles; roll, holding the chicken spiral with a toothpick; then, coat the rolls in melted butter and crushed Cheez-Its and microwave in a glass dish on high for 10 to 12 minutes.

And a disaster it was. The chicken was severely overcooked and the "cheese" concoction melted out and hardened in the bottom of the dish, leaving only its artificial cheddar flavor behind.

The other Miller family recipe I made was the biggest hit of the night. Passed down by Larry H. Miller's mother, Lorille, "fruit slush" is a family favorite at Christmas, according to the cookbook. The frozen concoction of pineapple, orange and lemon juice, combined with mashed bananas and sparkling water was refreshing, although the floating banana chunks were slightly controversial.

Even after cutting the recipe in half, I was left with a huge pitcher, which I was not sure five people could finish. But by the time the four courses were done, the slush had disappeared. (Some of this may be attributed to the need to wash down the cheddar cheese chicken.)

Having tasted from the kitchens of the 1992 Jazz, it would seem that what made that team great was, in fact, their basketball skills and not their cooking.

Unfortunately, the current Jazz will have to look beyond Karl's Hot Crab Salad for a solution to their woes. Although, maybe if they are willing to look hard for a turtle, Coach Sloan's dish could be the key.