Out of Hibernation

My friend Dave asked when I was posting another installation of Four Tablespoons of Fat. Since we're entering the high casserole season, I decided it was time to get back in the Dutch oven.

Tonight, I made a dish that was listed in a casserole cookbook, but which is not a casserole. I think this book has both straight casseroles and one-dish dinners, as this one was.

Because this meal contained chicken, I decided to check out the poultry recipes in the Southern Living Casseroles Cookbook. Much to my surprise (and, I'll admit, disappointment), most of the poultry recipes in this usually baffling and sometimes terrifying recipe book sound edible.

There was one, though, that I'd like to share for my friend Kim: "Baked Chicken with Peaches." The name alone will send chills down her spine: she does not enjoy the fruit + meat pairing in any way. But the odd simplicity of this recipe, plus one ingredient, caught my attention:

1 fryer, quartered
1 tbsp. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp butter or margarine
1 1-lb can peach halves
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg

Pretty simple, right? Not so crazy. Not anything my Kim would eat, but not insane, like some of these.

But what does give it that extra soupcon of crazy is the final ingredient:

1 tsp. monosodium glutamate

Yup: MSG.

That's what makes a dish, really: saltfat. It already has salt, and fat, but it needs that extra dash of saltfat to kick it up a notch.

Disappointed with the lack of insanity in the Poultry section, I went on to the Seafood section, which did not let me down in the least.

I think I'm going to explore this section at length, starting here, as we'll be in SC this weekend:

Charleston Shrimp Casserole
2 lb. cooked shrimp, cleaned (I know what this means, and I guess Mrs. Reid, of Charleston, assumes that she doesn't need to elaborate past that explanation, but for someone unfamiliar with preparing shrimp, I imagine a novice cook washing shrimp in dishwater.)

2 c. bread crumbs

2 c. tomato juice

1/2 tsp. salt

3 tbsp. butter

1 tbsp. hot sauce

2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

1 c. ketchup

Combine all ingredients and pour into a casserole. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Okay, I'm bad at math. I admit that. But that seems like A LOT of liquid. I mean A LOT. 2 cups of tomato juice, 1 cup of ketchup, 3 tablespoons of other liquids. I know that there will be two pounds of shrimp and some bread, but I just imagine shrimp floating in tomato-flavored bread sludge.

Also: South Carolinians, can you tell me what about this dish is endemic to Charleston? Besides the shrimp, that is.

In the next installment, we look at Crab Veronique.

What's the surprise?

The following is another recipe from the Southern Living Casseroles Cookbook.

I looked it up because I am trying, unsuccessfully, to reproduce my favorite chicken salad of all time, the chicken salad from The Gourmet Shop of Columbia SC. I can't do it. I've tried. I can't find a similar chicken salad here in DC, and I can't even find one up here I actually like. So I've gotten desperate.

Erica asked if I could make said attempt into a casserole, and for whatever ungodly reason, there are many "Chicken Salad Casserole" recipes. Which unnerve me. That's like mixing two completely different things. 

So I wanted to share the following recipe from the SLCC, to prove to Erica I'm not making this up. The following is not the Gourmet Shop recipe; instead, it's the Chicken Salad Casserole recipe from the SLCC. Just in case you need to make two things at once: a sandwich filling and a dinner.



Chicken Salad Surprise

2 cups diced cooked chicken

2 cups diced celery

.5 cup minced green pepper

2 tablespoons minced pimiento

1 tablespoon minced onion

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

2 tablespoons lemon juice

.5 cup mayonnaise

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 cup crushed potato chips

1 cup grated cheese

Slivered almonds to taste [honest to God, they had me up to here. how do you know how many slivered almonds you'll need until you hit your taste threshold? 5 slivers? 10slivers? a cup? a hogshead? a kelvin? a hectare? a parsec?]

Combine all ingredients except potato chips, cheese, and almonds, and place in a casserole. [Having lost me at "almonds to taste," I'm now gone. I know what this statement means: that you have a specific dish that is dubbed your "casserole dish," or, for short, your "casserole." However, this sounds like you mix everything together, then cram it into a broccoli-cheese casserole. Or a ham-lima bean-sprinkle casserole.]

Top with potato chips and cheese and sprinkle with almonds. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. 6 - 8 servings. [That doesn't seem like much. I think this could go to 45.]

And now, here at the end, they've lost me again. Because I don't really understand why chicken salad needs to be turned into a casserole, or why you need to add potato chips to ANYTHING.

But maybe that's the surprise. That sometimes things need potato chips as a garnish, or that you need a chicken salad casserole, the same way you need a meatloaf cocktail, or a screwdriver sandwich, or a tuna noodle pudding.

Surprise!

I can't wait to make this for the next dinner party I have for people I hate

This one almost seems like a joke. Like someone made it just to see if anyone would actually eat it, then laughed, silently and painfully, in the closet, while the too-polite neighbor choked it down.

Cottage Noodle Casserole
Salt (How much? A teaspoon? A jar? Until your blood dries up?)
3 qt. boiling water
8 oz. wide egg noodles
1 env. cream of leek soup mix (I don't even know where to go to buy this. Was this a well-known and widespread item in 1971?)
1/4 c. butter or margarine
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/4 tsp. dry mustard
2 c. milk
2 c. cream-style cottage cheese
1 c. grated sharp cheddar cheese

Okay, at this point, it doesn't seem so bad, right? Not delicious, but not awful. I could see this working together.

Wait wait. There's more.

1/4 c. raisins
1 1-lb can applesauce

You have gone completely off the rails, recipe.

Add 1 tablespoon salt to boiling water and add noodles gradually so that water continues to boil.

You know it's a bad sign when the recipe starts out by telling you how to boil noodles so as not to fuck them up.

Cook, stirring occasionally, until tender and drain in a colander.

Dammit! I was going to pour them into my pantyhose and let them drip-dry! However . . . with all of this other detail, it seems like you'd tell me how long it takes to achieve tenderness. 7 minutes? 10 minutes? Until I have a delicious pot of beige goo?

Combine the soup mix, butter, 1/4 teaspoon salt, pepper, mustard, and milk in a saucepan.

Well, at least now I'm getting a better idea how much salt to use. Which would've been nice to know before I sent Junior off to the Salt Mines.

I'm still worried, though, about the cream of leek soup. What if I can't find it? Is French onion okay, if I add powdered milk to it? Wait, I don't have powdered milk. Nevermind, I have Cremora. So, if you don't have powdered cream of leek soup, substitute one envelope of French onion, and some Cremora.

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened.

The soup mix must have cementlike properties, because I cannot imagine how the rest of the ingredients are going to thicken into anything beyond milk.

Add the noodles, cottage cheese, applesauce, raisins, and 1/2 cup cheese and mix well.

Until this moment, I'd convinced myself that you just stirred the raisins into the applesauce and served them as a side dish. Nope.

Turn into a 2.5-quart baking dish and sprinkle with remaining cheese.

I know what this means, but I imagine someone waving a magic wand over this concoction and transforming it into pyrex. I'd be more likely to eat pyrex.

Bake in 350-degree oven for about 3 minutes or until bubbly.

I am truly convinced that this recipe was the inspiration for the dinner made by Jenny Meyer. "It has raisins in it. You like raisins."

I see we failed World Cultures

One theme I've seen in the casserole book, that I will surely revisit later, is what I'm going to call Ethnic Dysphoria. It's when a recipe purports to be one thing, but has ingredients that are either not authentic or downright wrong. Like this one:

1/4 c. butter or margarine
1/4 c. flour
2.5 c. milk
1/2 c. sour cream
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 12-oz package elbow macaroni
1 carton cottage cheese
2 tsp. chopped parsley
1 tsp. oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
1 pkg. sliced mozzarella cheese
1/4 c grated Italian cheese
1/4 cup bread crumbs

Using these ingredients, I want you to tell me the country of origin from which this dish supposedly hails.

What is it with you people and boiled eggs?

I'm going to do some research into this, because I'm truly baffled. Apparently, boiled eggs were a staple in late-60s/early-70s dishes. I've never thought of boiled eggs being all that versatile; perhaps because I find them absolutely vile. However, had I been cooking, or, well, ALIVE in 1971, I would have been a victim of Boiled Egg Peer Pressure. "C'mon, Sally, everyone's doing it."

One of the more stomach-churning examples I found was the following recipe:

Crunchy Baked Eggs Au Gratin
3 tbsp shortening (Good, it's going to be a healthy recipe.)
1/4 c. flour
1/8 tsp paprika (Paprika was also very popular then, but only in the tiniest of tiny doses.)
1 tsp salt
2 c. milk
2 tbsp chopped green pepper (Whoa, don't go crazy there!)
2 tsp Angostura bitters (Wait, what?)
1/2 c grated American cheese
3 cups toasted bread cubes (Thank heavens, all that paprika and green pepper were setting my gizzard ablaze.)
6 hard-cooked eggs, halved

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt the shortening in a saucepan and stir in the flour, paprika, and salt. Stir in milk gradually and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until smooth and thick. (Are there two more magical words in the English language than "smooth" and "thick?" I think not!) Add the green pepper, Angostura bitters, and cheese, and stir until cheese is melted. Fold in 2 cups bread cubes. Arrange eggs in a well-greased 1.5-quart casserole (more grease! woo hoo! although I'm disappointed that it wasn't mentioned in the ingredients; what if I didn't plan ahead and I run out of shortening?) and pour cheese sauce over eggs. Top with remaining bread cubes. Bake for 20 minutes or until lightly browned. 6 servings.

6 servings? Are you kidding me? I'd eat the whole thing in one sitting. Nom nom nom.

The John Birch Society Casserole

As you may or may not know, the John Birch Society actively opposes the United Nations. I imagine that the members of the JBS sit around all the time, fantasizing about the liquidation of the UN, in ways both mild (Let's just disband it!) and extreme (Let's blow it to kingdom come!).

With this in mind, I'm almost sure that a member of the JBS came up with the next offering in the Casserole Book of the Damned (as I have taken to calling it):

Casserole International (Or, "What the UN would have us all eat if they are able to infiltrate polite society")

3 cups cooked roast beef, cut in large cubes
1 cup tomato juice
2 sm. cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. fines herbes
1 tsp. curry powder
1 tsp. minced green pepper
1 pkg. frozen chow mein
1 cup cooked fettucine
1/2 cup cooking sherry
1/2 cup grated sharp Cheddar
2 tbsp. minced parsley

In case you can't tell, this is a rogues' gallery of ingredients from various cuisines, none of which I can imagine working very well together. In fact, I think this sounds like one of the more disagreeable concoctions ever.

Well played, JBS. Well played. You have only to feed this mess to as many people as possible, and they'll see what you're talking about: INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION IS AN ABOMINATION AND MUST BE STOPPED.

Back on the Blog Gang

I said, a year ago, that I would blog regularly about the casserole book I bought. Well, best-laid plans of mice and men and casseroles, and all that.

Finally, I'm getting back on the noodle horse, and writing at least a blog a week (but I'll try for more) about the recipes located in this book.

I'm going to start at the beginning, and go forward. I may not do a blog about every one, but I'll do as many as I can.

The first in this series is:

Buffet Casserole

Most of the ingredients sound fine; maybe even edible:

1/2 lb. beef sirloin
3 tbsp. butter or margarine
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 10-oz package frozen green beans
1/2 cup beef bouillon
1/2 tsp salt (although I question the sense of having a half a cup of bouillon AND salt, but whatever)
1 tsp flour
2 tbsp grated parmesan cheese

Okay, this really isn't all that bad, right? Right.

Well, then you get to the final ingredient:

2 15-oz cans beef ravioli

Wait, what?

You're apparently supposed to mix all of the other ingredients together in a saute, and line a baking dish with the canned ravioli. You then pour the other ingredients into the middle of the ravioli. Think of it as the crust, I suppose.

Doesn't this sound DELICIOUS?

I'll try to remember to scan a picture of this monstrosity tomorrow. Because reading about it is not nearly as horrendous as looking at it.