Category Archives: Casserole

Thanksgiving veg 2010

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My family always argues over a Thanksgiving vegetable dish.  My dad doesn’t like the classic green bean casserole made with Cream of Mushroom Soup and crispy fried onion ring crumbles.  He can’t get past the condensed soup flavor.  When I asked him last year what vegetable I should make instead, he suggested lima beans.  We made green bean casserole anyway.

One year my Mom and I tried making this dish from scratch.  We figured, fresh green beans lightly steamed, thick chunks of mushrooms, a silky white sauce, and what could be better?  That was the year I determined that part of what I like so much about the classic green bean casserole is… the taste of processed condensed soup.  I can’t help it.  I love the savory, umami saltiness of it, and the homemade substitute was just not an acceptable replacement for me.

One year at Thanksgiving with some family friends, they brought a big salad to supplement our carbohydrate-rich, overloaded plates.  The bowl was passed around the table.  No one took any salad except L, who had made it in the first place.  When she protested, her husband uttered the truest words anyone has ever spoken: “Thanksgiving is not about lettuce.”  So salad, too, failed the test.

Now that October is over, the challenge again rears its head: which vegetables can I dress up to complement the comforting classics we always serve?  While N. was gone at a conference recently, I fiddled around with some trial dishes and voila, Thanksgiving Veg 2010 was born: creamed spinach and artichoke bake.  It’s the comfort and familiarity of creamed spinach, with the flavors and reminiscence of spinach artichoke dip.  Perfection, no?

Here’s what you need:

4 TB butter

4 cloves garlic, crushed and minced

1 – 2 leeks, white and pale green parts only, chopped fine

4 TB flour

Generous grating of fresh nutmeg

2 cups milk or cream

4 oz. cream cheese

At least 10 oz. spinach (that’s the amount in one frozen box, but I used fresh because I prefer it)

16 oz. can of artichoke hearts in water, drained and quartered

Salt and pepper to taste

Topping:

2 TB butter

½ cup or more of Panko bread crumbs

2-3 TB parmesan cheese, grated

Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat.  When it is nearly all melted, add the garlic and sauté for just a minute or two, until the aroma is enticing.  Add the leeks and sauté until they are softened.  Leeks are a new love of mine.  They are the least aggressively flavored members of the onion family, and I think they taste like a cross between a sweet onion and garlic.  They don’t have that astringency onions sometimes do, and I think they are like a stalk of springtime.  I’ve started putting them in frittatas, and when I had one left over on the night I made this little concoction, it seemed like the perfect thing to add in.

When the leeks are tender but not browned, add the flour and nutmeg.  Add some pepper too, if you like.  Stir in until well incorporated with no huge floury lumps, and cook for a minute or two until the flour is pale golden in color.  Then add the milk, slowly, whisking the entire time.  I added it in installments of probably half a cup each, stirring until the milk was fully integrated into the flour mixture.  I found this helped avoid lumps, making a smoother base overall.  Add the cream cheese and mix in.  Whisking fairly constantly, let the milk come to a boil.  It will thicken as it heats.

When the milk is quite thick, add the spinach and artichoke hearts.  The spinach will wilt quickly, and as soon as it is looking soft, kill the heat.  Since this is going to bake for a while, you don’t want to overcook the spinach because it will lose its beautiful color and begin to look muddy.

Salt and pepper to taste.  You could stop here and eat this whole delectable mess right out of the skillet, but I wasn’t ready to quit yet.  After all, it takes my dad about half an hour to carve a turkey, so the oven is (mostly) free.  Why not take advantage of that?

With your oven at a preheated 350F, carefully dump the spinach and artichoke mixture into a baking dish (I used a glass nine-inch pie pan).  Set it aside for a moment while you make the topping.

Mix together the Panko bread crumbs and parmesan cheese with the softened butter.  Drop the buttery crumbs in little clumps all over the top of the spinach and artichoke mixture.  If you don’t get the vegetables completely covered, that’s okay.  In fact, it’s good, because it means any exposed edges of leeks or artichokes will get a little toasty and golden.  More texture = more exciting to eat!

Bake the whole thing for about half an hour at 350F, or until the crumbs on top are browned and the sauce is bubbling at the edges.  Remove and consume.

What I liked about this dish was… well, innumerable.  But the basics: I love creamed spinach, and this was a more extravagant, luxurious take on it.  I also love spinach dip, and this reminded me of it, but without the excessive mayonnaise, the MSG-laced spice mixture, or the pounds of parmesan that go into a hot artichoke version.  The bread crumbs on top were a welcome textural element, especially for a Thanksgiving table, where stuffing, mashed potato, and even the tender juicy turkey, all lack an essential crunchiness.  Not that you would want your mashed potatoes to be crunchy, but it is a sensation for your mouth often missing from this meal.

I told my mom about this dish when I spoke to her on the phone this weekend, and before I could finish explaining what it was, she had already confirmed that this, indeed, would be our Thanksgiving vegetal offering.  Challenge met, and challenge exceeded!  Now I just have to wait for the end of November…

Cheese and macaroni

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I pride myself a bit on escaping from some of the pressures and temptations of processed food. I like to cook, I like homemade food, and I like when my shelves are full of whole ingredients and natural products and grains and all that snobby stuff. If I can (relatively) easily make it from scratch, I try not to buy it premade.

But there are always exceptions, and sometimes they are the very worst kind. You see, most of my life I have hated all but one variety of macaroni and cheese. My mom’s elbow noodles in cheesy bechamel with bread crumbs on top? Can’t stand it. The crunchy baked roasting hot steaming vessel-o-mac from Cornucopia, one of our go-tos? Merely tolerable. But that kind that comes in a blue box? That kind with the chewy, rubbery noodles and toxic neon orange powdery “cheese”? Oh god, I love it. I wait till it’s 10 for $10 at the grocery store and stock up. Sometimes I peek into the back of my cupboard just to check that I have a box or two stockpiled there. I’m not ashamed.

And yet… and yet I always feel like I’m missing something. There must be an element of worth to homemade mac and cheese. People love it! Our friend X is practically a connoisseur. I finally decided I, not the mac, must be the problem. I love pasta with cheese on it, I love fettuccine alfredo, so where, I asked myself, did the problem arise?

In the sauce.

The closest I’ve come to enjoying a bowl of homemade, baked macaroni was a version in which the sauce was made of (as near as I could tell) two things: butter and cheese. It’s the white sauce I apparently take issue with. Thick and creamy but bland, with all the graininess of melted cheese but only 50% of the flavor. Ever notice how a chocolate milkshake has only the palest color and flavor of chocolate compared to a big scoop of rich, fudgy ice cream? Cheese sauce seems to do the same thing to cheese.

So the natural solution seemed to me to tinker around in my kitchen, producing numerous casseroles of ever increasing cheesiness, until I found a ratio I (gasp!) actually enjoyed. Perversely, however, given my strange penchant of creating and serving new food to friends and family without testing it first, I decided to make macaroni and cheese for my in-laws during our visit to their home.

I don’t know what made me think of it. I don’t know what made me decide it was a good idea. But suddenly, there I was in the tiny grocery store in their little town in the Sierra Nevada foothills, buying cheese and elbow noodles and Panko breadcrumbs. Baby, I was makin’ mac’n’cheese.

I must admit to borrowing a bit from Pioneer Woman’s recipe, but I made a few alterations of my own. Here’s the rundown of ingredients, some approximated:

1 pound elbow noodles (1 16oz. box)

¼ cup butter (½ a stick)

¼ cup flour

2 tsp spicy brown mustard

2 cups milk, room temperature

1 egg, beaten, room temperature

garlic salt

black pepper

3-4 cups cheese? I used an 8oz. block of sharp cheddar, 2 generous handfuls of parmesan, and some already grated leftover medium cheddar stowed in the fridge.

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

Topping:

2 TB butter

½ cup Panko breadcrumbs

2 TB parmesan

2-3 TB sharp cheddar

  • Cook the noodles in boiling water until almost done. They should still be a little underdone on the inside, because they are going to continue to cook when we bake them. Drain well and set them aside until we call for them.
  • Melt the butter in a large pot or pan over medium to medium-high heat. As it melts, add the flour and stir in, making a smooth golden paste. This is a roux.
  • After letting the roux cook for a minute or two, watching it carefully and stirring frequently so it doesn’t burn, add the mustard. As Pioneer Woman said, this adds a really nice but not recognizable tang to the finished dish.
  • Begin adding the milk gradually. I probably added in three or four additions. Stir or whisk well after each addition of milk, until the mixture is smooth and does not have big lumps of flour. When all the milk is added, let it cook, stirring occasionally, for about five minutes until it starts to emit heavy reluctant bubbles and becomes quite thick and rich. Turn the heat down to low. This is a bechamel, or basic white sauce.
  • Slowly, stirring constantly, add about ¼ cup of the bechamel to the beaten egg. This is tempering, which starts the egg cooking slowly so it mixes in smoothly in liquid form. If you just tipped the egg into the sauce hot on the stovetop, it would scramble and leave little eggy bits in your smooth wonderful mixture. After tempering, add the egg and sauce mixture, now warmed and safe, back into the bechamel. Season to taste. I used garlic salt and seasoned pepper, because that’s what I found in my mother in-law’s spice cupboard.
  • Add the cheese in handfuls, stirring until each addition is melted before adding the next. This way your sauce doesn’t get overwhelmed with clumps of cheese, and if you decide it is cheesy enough without the whole amount, you can stop where you like. I wanted it to start to get stringy and clingy, as the cheese overwhelms the milk completely.
  • Add the parsley and the cooked, drained noodles. Stir to combine.
  • Pour the sticky cheesy mixture into a buttered 2 quart casserole dish and load it up with the topping (procedure follows), then bake in a preheated 350F oven for about 30 minutes, or until the edges are bubbling up from the bottom and the topping has become relentlessly golden and crisp. Eat.

To make the topping,

  • Pinch about two TB of butter into pieces in a bowl.
  • Add the bread crumbs, parmesan, and cheddar and mix together as you would a streusel for a crisp. You want small chunky pieces, and you want the cheeses and crumbs to be evenly distributed. This makes a lot for a casserole dish of macaroni, but N. really loves a crunchy topping so I always add a little more than, perhaps, the average person would. Adjust to your tastes.

When the topping was taking on a burnished shade and the combination of butter from the sides of the dish and cheese from the sauce was boiling and bursting up around the sides, I liberated our dinner from the oven and we dug into it anxiously, dropping large spoonfuls onto our plates. The noodles had soaked up a lot of the bechamel during their stint in the oven, leaving the decadent suggestion of creaminess but the overwhelming assault of cheesy flavor holding them together. The topping was the perfect combination of sizzling salty crunchy sharpness and, served beside steamed broccoli and whole wheat focaccia, I must admit, I liked it. I went back for seconds. I had it for lunch the next day. Forget macaroni and cheese. Give me, for the rest of time, cheese with macaroni.

Dreamy.

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It’s been over a month since our Breakfast for Dinner party, but I was doing some photo editing and discovered that I’d taken pictures of a dish that never got featured.  Well, okay, that’s not quite accurate.  The truth is, I made this dish for the party, tasted a tiny slice, and when saliva flooded my mouth and my cheeks got warm with appreciation of the spicy cheesy love, vowed to go back for more.  Somehow hours passed, and when I made it back to the table only crumbs remained.

This meant that a week later, I felt it was necessary to make it again.  It was that good.  It was a Jalapeno Cheese Grits Casserole featured on a birthday episode of Bobby Flay’s show “Boy Meets Grill.”  It was also one of the more perfect sounding combinations of ingredients I’d heard in a while.  Months before the party, I knew I was going to make this.  I made very few changes, but I did eliminate the Tabasco sauce and halve the jalapenos.  I like some heat, but not so much that I can’t tell what my food tastes like.  I also grated extra cheddar cheese on the top of the casserole once I’d spread it into a baking dish.  Cheese is the reason I could never adopt a vegan lifestyle.  More than bread or bacon, cheese might just be my favorite savory food item.

Out of the oven, this casserole was tremendous looking.  The top browned and crusted and gained some topography as not-quite-smooth sections became crannies and crevices.  Under this slight crunch of an exterior, the inside sliced through like fresh mozzarella: moist, creamy, a little firm.  On the palate, it was tremendous tasting.  It was cheesy and spongy with bits of crispness, and a heat that hit the tongue and the back of the throat, not during the chewing process, but after the bite was swallowed and you thought you were safe.  Just a pleasant heat, easily washed down with luscious, buttery tender chunks of pot roast and a good dark beer.

As good as it was fresh out of the oven, I admit that my reasons for making this dish again so soon after our party were really all about the leftovers.  What’s better than jalapeno cheese grits casserole, steaming and flecked with chiles and strings of cheese?  Jalapeno cheese grits casserole cut into fingers just out of the refrigerator, and fried in a pan of sizzling butter.  Yes, I fried them.

They spit and hissed as things warmed through and the cheese started melting, but I dueled them with a pair of long-handled tongs and everything worked out just fine.  The key, it seems, is to leave them alone longer than you might want to before flipping.  I managed for a good two or three minutes per side over medium-high heat, and this magical dark toasty crust formed all over.  It looked like the fragile crusty edge of the white on a fried egg when the butter gets too hot.  It tasted like a southern fried dream.

Breakfast for Dinner

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I have a curious relationship with breakfast food.  The heavy kind, the kind you get from a diner or a good bed-and-breakfast or a hotel, doesn’t sit well with me in the morning.  It’s too much, it weighs me down.  But it’s food I love.  Potatoes, eggs, bacon, quiche, pancakes, cinnamon rolls… the list goes on.  So I take full advantage of every opportunity I get to eat this kind of food later in the day.

Enter Friday, April 2nd:  for the third year running, N. and I are hosting a Breakfast for Dinner potluck.  We try to host one party per term, usually with some loose theme, and I think this one is my favorite.  My mouth is already watering at the possibilities.

Here’s a preview of my own menu for the evening: 

Ph-Ph rice pudding

Jalapeno cheese grits casserole

Cranberry donuts

Deviled eggs

Spiked hot apple cider

Mimosas

Yum.

Rice Parade

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In my mind, few foods are as simply clean and perfect as a pot of perfectly cooked rice. If foods were chosen to embody colors, rice would be the perfect candidate for whiteness. Think about it. Freshly made, just off the heat, the first time you fluff it to break up some of the clumps, it’s like little pillows. It smells comforting and grainy and nutty and warm, it’s stuffed in heating pads and pillows, it’s thrown at weddings, it’s an amazing little miracle all on its own – tiny individual grains, hard and pointed, but after 20 minutes in bubbling water they magically become this beautiful, warm, sticky heap of comfort. You can do anything with them, but why would you? How can you possibly improve upon the perfection of a fresh, hot, sticky/chewy/creamy/nutty pot of white rice?

By turning it into pudding.

I’ve never liked the look of those stovetop rice puddings that are soupy and goopy – almost like the consistency of hot cereal. No, when I think pudding, I want something that sets up firm and has to be broken through with a spoon, not just scooped up. I want a custard. Given our crazy weather today, my mom’s amended rice pudding recipe is perfect.

Cook two cups of raw rice in a pot on the stovetop until done, then take the pot off the heat, remove the lid, and let the rice cool.

In a large casserole dish combine:

3 eggs, beaten

3 cups milk

¾ cups sugar

1 ½ tsp. vanilla

¾ cups raisins

1 generous tsp. cinnamon

Cooled, cooked rice

Place casserole dish in another larger, shallow dish (I use a glass pie plate) and fill the shallow dish about halfway with hot water. Cook, uncovered, in a preheated 350 degree oven for 45-60 minutes, or until custard is just set. Remove from oven. Cool. Consume.

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Hasty Bites

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A friend S. told me today that I hadn’t updated in a while and really should see to my absence.  Unacceptable.  I sputtered, considering all the usual excuses.  I’ve been sick all week.  I’m so busy.  I have needy students, a dog desperate for exercise, books piling up that need reading, but she was right.  I just needed the text, and lord knows I’m not short on text.  I talk text in my sleep.  Which I’ve been getting a lot of lately, what with being sick.

The point is, she guilted me like a Greek Grandmother.  Appropriately enough, my response is Spanikopita!

It was one of those brilliant flashes of leftover magic.  Phyllo dough languishing from some fanciful application.  Feta just weeping in its own milk to be used.  Dill wilting down with every passing day.  I usually think of spanikopita either as a kind of delicious Greek lasagna, or as individually wrapped servings.  This evening, in what I can see is playing into a theme,  I didn’t have the time for either.

Hastily, I buttered and stacked my sheets of phyllo and draped them over a pie dish.  Then I mixed a beaten egg, a few slivered green onions, a defrosted, wrung dry box of chopped spinach, at least a tablespoon of chopped dill, crumbled feta, and black pepper, then poured it down onto the dry surface of the top layer of dough and wrapped the whole thing up like a money bag.  I pinched the top together, fanned out the edges, and lovingly brushed the outside with butter before baking for half an hour or so.

I’ve never cooked feta long enough to melt it, and something very interesting happens to the flavor.  Pavlov wasn’t Greek, but I think you’ll know what I mean when I cite him in relation to my usual reaction to feta cheese.  Something about the sharp tang.  But this application made the cheese more mellow, almost creamy, and certainly no less delicious.

Happy, S.?  There’s another bite/byte where this came from in your almost immediate future…