Oct 19
Tarrant FiglioCasseroles, Cookbooks, Meat, Vegetables, retro food
Now syndicated on BlogHer.
A couple of weeks ago, I was startled by a cookbook among the books we picked up at the library. I don’t generally read new cookbooks and why on earth were we getting one from the library. It was too polished, too many pictures, too new. Cook’s Country Best Lost Suppers-Old-Fashioned, Home Cooked Recipes Too Good to Forget, 2009. I put it in the cold room to flip through while waiting for the dogs to come in.
I didn’t like it. First was the matter of the pictures (am not a fan). Then there was the matter of the “Notes from the Test Kitchen” at the end of each recipe. These were family favorite recipes from all over the country. How dare they change them? I read on though. And I thought. I considered. I craved.
Then I realized a couple of things, these are recipes that I would LIKE, do like, and uh, I tweak old recipes all the time. The people who submitted probably tweaked the originals as well. Ok, so maybe I love this cookbook, as new as it is and as much as it first rankled. I may even put it on my wish list. You see, there were a lot of recipes I want to try but it will be due back at the library soon. So, go see if your library has it. Give it a look. See what you think. The only thing I would have liked is the exact recipe pre-tweaking. For instance, one mentions that the original had used the crock pot but they preferred the oven to save time. I would nearly ALWAYS prefer a crock pot than the oven.
The one recipe I made already, Funeral Potatoes with Ham, got mixed reactions last night. Boy child and youngest objected to the mushrooms. (They both liked it well enough though-even if it had that horrible food included) Girl child-food snob-objected to the “casserole-ness” of the recipe. She also wasn’t impressed. But as she reflected on it, she said “You know, I didn’t think I liked this much, but now I want more.” Denise feared the ham and the “That looks like au gratin. I don’t like au gratin.” She had two servings. As for me-yum.
My notes-the peeling and shredding of the potatoes after cooking them was highly unpopular as a step. I think in the future, I will use pre-shredded potatoes-it won’t change the baking time and save a big step. We also didn’t butter the cornflake crumbs. I served with a dill cole slaw.
Funeral Potatoes With Ham
4 lbs russet potatoes, scrubbed
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 lb white mushrooms, sliced thin (We used pre-sliced)
salt (oops-left that out)
1 onion, minced
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
11/2 cups whole milk
1/2 teaspoon minced fresh thyme
1/2 teaspoon pepper
11/2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 pound ham steak, cut into 2-inch matchsticks
1 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups cornflakes crushed fine
1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13 x 9 inch baking dish. Set aside
2. (This is the step I would skip in the future) Bring the potatoes and 4 quarts of water to a simmer in a large pot and cook until just shy of tender (a paring knife should glide through the flesh with slight resistance), 10-15 minutes. Drain the potatoes and set aside. When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel them and then grate the flesh lengthwise on the large holes of a box grater. Return the grated potatoes to the pot.
3. While the potatoes cook, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat until shimmering. (a step we said “Huh?” to) Add the mushrooms and 3/4 teaspoon salt (yeah, that salt, forgot.) and cook until mushrooms have released their juices and are brown around the edges, 7-10 minutes. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.
4. Whisk in the milk, thyme, and pepper, bring to simmer, and cook, stirring frequently until thickened slightly, about 1 minutes. Stir in the cheese and 6 tablespoons of butter and cook until melted, about 1 minute.
5. Off the heat, stir in the ham and sour cream. Pour the mixture over the potatoes and toss to combine. (I think this could be done in the 9 x 13 pan in the future and save a second saucy pot to clean) Transfer the mixture to the prepared baking dish. Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons butter in a bowl in microwave. (skipped this) Stir in the cornflakes, then sprinkle evenly over the top of potato mixture.
6. Place the baking dish on a foil-lined rimmed baking sheet and bake until potatoes are bubbling and the top is golden brown, 35-45 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.
Oct 03
Tarrant FiglioCasseroles, Meat
Tonight, we had non-traditional lasagna for dinner. Or “Meatloaf Lasagna” or Mommy’s new lasagna recipe. I had planned meatloaf for dinner. Boy was kitchen sous chef for tonight’s prep. He hates meatloaf. I was out of cheese nips, so I ended up crushing corn flakes. Then I realized we had no potatoes or instant potatoes and I couldn’t serve meatloaf without potatoes. Ok. Boy was happy! Maybe I should make polenta layered something. Boy grumbled he liked polenta even less than meatloaf. My eyes lit upon the lasagna noodles. Oooo some sort of lasagna. Out of Parmesan, out of mozzarella.
Non-Traditional Lasagna AKA Meatloaf Lasagna
1 box of lasagna noodles (uncooked)
1 lb ground beef
1 jar spaghetti sauce
1 tsp Italian Seasoning
1 cup cornflake crumbs
1 tsp chopped garlic (or to taste)
1 can diced tomatoes (undrained)
2 cups small curd cottage cheese
2 cups shredded cheddar
2 eggs
Spray 9 x13 pan with nonstick spray. Brown ground beef. Mix with spaghetti sauce, Italian seasoning, cornflake crumbs, diced tomatoes, garlic. Beat eggs with fork. If you like a less lumpy lasagna, (I do) whiz cottage cheese in blender/food processor/handy chopper until smoother…or have ricotta on hand. Mix cheeses and eggs together. Splash about 1 cup meat mixture in bottom of lasagna pan. Add layer of noodles. Use half of cheese mixture. Then half of remaining meat mixture. Repeat with layer of noodles and rest of meat mixture and then cheese mixture. Sprinkle a bit more cheddar on top. Cover with foil and bake 1 hour at 350. Take foil off. 10 more minutes or until bubbly.
Note: Mama liked it. Teens liked it. Lasagna hating tween didn’t but she ate some. Denise said it was ok and certainly ate it. I liked it.
Apr 03
Tarrant FiglioCasseroles, Meat, Recipes, retro food
It is quarter to seven pm as I write this post, I don’t know what is for dinner. At all. I thought we were having stuffed zucchini. But the zucchini I remembered as being in the fridge transformed into cucumbers. I don’t know how that happened. Really.
I am hungry. Laughing Cow + cranberry bread is not really enough to fuel me all day…even with a generous amount of coca cola and a caramel macchiatto.
But, instead of fixing a meal, I am here. Mostly because I can’t fathom what to make for dinner. I flipped through the cookbook on my desk. I seem to have few of the ingredients needed for any of the recipes and really, we all know what not having dinner ready by this hour means at this house: No recipe is going to save me from serving everyone what is known as “scrounging” at this house.
Yep. Every able bodied person old enough/young enough to run a microwave without assistance gets to figure out what they want for dinner and prepare it themselves. (This would be everyone in this house, save my mother who isn’t having an able-bodied day. I will fix something for her. (Oh, by the way, the limited posting of late has been related to the fact that my mother moved in to our home at the end of the year)
Going out seems too taxing and oh wait, taxes mean we don’t have the money anyway. Well, taxes and other things mean we have no money. Chicago is expensive. Moving to Chicago is expensive. That sort of thing.
I could use a recipe in this book though. We have the ingredients. Some in our family might even enjoy it…mostly the part of the family not here for dinner tonight. On the other hand, they may look at it suspiciously. They often do if they see some new food and evidence of a retro cookbook. They also are highly reluctant to eat anything with either “mock” or “casserole” in the name. This recipe contains both.
If you can sell your family on it though…nice budget dinner and you likely have all the ingredients.
Mock Lasagne Casserole
1 pound bulk pork sausage
1 15-oz can tomato sauce
1/2 teaspoon each garlic salt, pepper, and dried basil leaves, crushed
1 7-oz package macaroni-cooked and drained
1 1/2 cups cream-style cottage cheese
6 oz shredded process American Cheese (1 1/2 cups) (oh good grief, use cheddar)
Brown the meat; drain off fat. Add tomato sauce, garlic salt, pepper, basil and 1/2 cup water. Cover; simmer 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. In a 2-qt casserole, layer HALF each macaroni, cottage cheese, shredded cheeese, and meat sauce. Repeat. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes. Serves 6 to 8.
(Recipe from Good Food on a Budget, 1971)
Oct 14
Tarrant FiglioCasseroles, Recipes, Vegetables, retro food
My kids like plain steamed broccoli. I know. Strange children. However, tonight we are having broccoli casserole. This violates their sensibility but some day I hope to bring them over to the casserole dark side.
This is from my grandmother’s recipe box. Yes, you can cut the mayo down and the eggs. I use only 1 can of cream of mushroom and skip the butter topping. Somehow I feel a little virtuous doing these things…but on the other hand Nini’s tasted better.
Broccoli Casserole
2 cups chopped broccoli
1 onion, chopped
1 cup grated cheese
1 cup mayonnaise
4 eggs
2 small cans mushroom soup
salt and pepper
Mix and cook at 350 until bubbles. Top with butter and bread crumbs. Brown 5-10 min.
Sep 10
Tarrant FiglioCasseroles, Cookbooks, Recipes, Vegetables vegetarian
This is totally not a retro recipe, but it is what we had for dinner tonight. This prompted @dtanton to tweet that the Polenta Funky Mushroom Lasagna was awesome. This of course brought requests for more info…which she can’t answer.
Let me preface the recipe by saying, I really didn’t think this would go over well. We are not big lasagna fans. @dtanton doesn’t like Italian food much at all and well, I am not the biggest fan of tomato sauce. She hates creamy sauces. We generally don’t do Italian food. We also are not huge polenta fans. About once a year I will fix something with polenta and it gets a meh response from both of us. For whatever reason, when pitching dinner ideas this week while flipping through the cookbook, we went with this one.
I prepped it Sunday, but we certainly were not rushing to eat it. The tofu apricot kugel went first (also in the Passionate Vegetarian-This is also excellent and totally the noodle kugel for anyone, unless your bubbe/zayde makes the only noodle kugel you can ever imagine enjoying) . Followed by the Pad Thai Wraps (pretty darn good-from Whole Foods frugal recipe gig)
Anyhow, it turned out to be a surprise favorite. Really surprise. BIG. Huge. Surprise. Awesome is not a word that describes many recipes in this house, not even long time favorites.
The original recipe came from the BEST Vegetarian cookbook ever written…Passionate Vegetarian by Crescent Dragonwagon (a nifty writer outside of cookbooks and she can teach you to be a fab one too). The Oven Baked Chicken Fried Tofu recipe also comes from there. Even if you are a dedicated omnivore, you should own this cookbook. Huge cookbook. Buy it. We have had tons of successful meals from it, the intros to the recipes and the discussion in general…WONDERFUL!!!!
The recipe originally called for 1/2 shiitake 1/2 lb button mushrooms. I split the difference and went with a pound of baby bellas. It called for a homemade basic Italian tomato sauce, I went with a jar. Freshly grated parmesan…umm yeah, it came in a can. sorry. Yeah, I would change that but shrug. So, below is not actually what happens in the book…but you can figure it out.
Polenta Lasagna with Mushrooms Bechamel
1/2 large onion
1 lb baby bella mushrooms, sliced
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons low-fat milk (err I used skim)
2 tablespoons cornstarch (Hey, did you know Argo comes in a little plastic canister now? way cool)
2 oz reduced fat cream cheese, softened to room temperature
1/4 cup white wine (Gasp! Wine in the house! Thank you Redwood City Holiday Inn Express Priority Club check-in rewards. How long does a re-corked open bottle of wine last?)
Salt, freshly ground black pepper (err um, not so fresh here, sorry again) and freshly ground nutmeg. (No, we were out of even the not freshly ground sort. May have added dash of apple pie spice? maybe not)
3 1/2 cups spaghetti sauce
1 tube of plain polenta (or you could make your own or use pesto flavored) sliced in 3/8 thick slices (divide this into 4 piles now so you don’t run short like I did)
1/4-3/4 c. Parmesan cheese
Preheat oven to 375. (Skip this if you are prepping ahead like I did) Spray your 9 x13 pan with Pam. Set aside.
Spray a large skillet with cooking oil or dump a smidge of olive oil in it or both. Saute your onion until almost translucent. Add the mushrooms and continue to saute until it they start to get limp. Add the 3/4 cup of milk, bring to simmer.
Dissolve the cornstarch in the remaining 2 T. milk. When the mushrooms simmer, add the cornstarch mixture. It gets gummy at this point (or “thick and pasty”). Stir in the cream cheese and then the wine. When well blended, remove from heat, season to taste.
Spread some spaghetti sauce on the bottom of the pan. Then make a sparse layer of polenta slices (about 1/4 of the polenta). It won’t completely cover the bottom of the dish. Then dust it with Parmesan. Throw some mushroom mixture on top. Rinse and repeat. Ok, don’t rinse. Just repeat the sauce/Parmesan/polenta layering. I actually think I ended up with fewer layers because I didn’t remember the instructions very well and didn’t keep walking back and forth between cookbook and dish. (Stop here if prepping ahead)
Place in the preheated oven and bake until bubbly, 35-45 minutes. Allow to rest for 15 min after removing from oven for prettier slices (It smelled good, we didn’t wait.)
May 06
Tarrant FiglioCasseroles, Fish, Recipes, retro food oysters, recipe, retro
These are the baked oysters I grew up eating from my great-grandmother. Nothing fancy…best with the freshest oysters you can get. So…really not a good choice for a month without an r in the name.
1 qt oysters, cooked in juice.
Saute 3 or 4 stalks celery, parsley, 1 bell pepper, chopped fine, 1 stick butter, 1 large onion (chopped). Toast to light brown 1/2 loaf bread, grated. Pour oysters into vegetables, thicken with bread crumbs. Season with Tabasco, chili powder (lots). Preheat oven to 450. Bake 12-15 minutes or until crumbs on top are toasted and dish is warmed through and bubbly. Serves 6.
May 01
Tarrant FiglioCasseroles, Recipes, Vegetables, retro food casserole, retro
I love spinach. I love spinach casserole. Unfortunately, dietary restrictions keep me from my favorite vegetable. My great-grandmother thought this recipe was good-the hard-boiled eggs in casseroles never did anything for me though.
2 pkgs chopped spinach (10 oz pkgs) cooked and drained
4 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
1 can cream of chicken soup (or cream of asparagus/cream of celery)
Grated sharp cheese
Mix all together. Top with breadcrumbs and cheese. Bake at 375 until firm.
Apr 08
Tarrant FiglioCasseroles, Fish, Recipes, retro food
We do a lot of family sized recipes around here…this one is a nice tuna just for one. Use cheddar or swiss instead of American. Yes, the cucumber gets cooked.
1 small cucumber, seeded and chopped
1 3 1/4 oz can tuna, drained and flaked
1/4 cup quick cooking rice
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Dash garlic salt
1/4 cup shredded American cheese
In a 12-ounce casserole, combine cucumber, tuna, rice, water, lemon juice and garlic salt. Bake, covered at 350 till rice is cooked-about 25 minutes. Top with cheese. Bake uncovered until cheese melts, 5 or so minutes. Makes 1 serving.
Mar 04
Tarrant FiglioCasseroles, Fish, Recipes, retro food
Crunchy and delicious and oh so retro! Very quick and a crowd pleaser-though the recipe only serves 4-5. It probably won’t please your cardiologist though…the salt and fat is outrageous!
Chopstick Tuna
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can chow mein noodles
1 6-9 oz can of tuna
1 cup sliced celery
1/2 cup salted toasted cashews
1/4 cup chopped onion
Dash pepper
Mix soup with 1/4 cup water. Add 1 cup chow mein noodles and remaining ingredients; toss lightly. Place in ungreased 10x 6 baking dish. Sprinkle remaining noodles on top.
Bake at 375 for 30 minutes or till heated. Trim with canned mandarin orange slices. Makes 4-5 servings.
Mar 03
Tarrant FiglioCasseroles, Meat, Recipes, retro food casserole, hamburger, retro
Ok, this one is one of those retro recispes that you have to have developed a taste for as a child. Otherwise, it just won’t fly. However, if your mama made it–I bet you have a fondness for it still…or an instinctual gag reflex. It has all the retro standbys-Bisquick, hamburger, instant onion, MSG, mayo and processed cheese! (and yes, the instant minced onion does make 3 appearances in the recipe)
Hamburger Biscuit Bake
1 tablespoon instant minced onion
2/3 cup milk
2 cups packaged biscuit mix
1 lb ground beef
1 tablespoon instant onion
1 cup sharp process cheese
1/4 cup mayonnaise
3 tablespoons snipped parsley
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 teaspoon instant minced onion
***
Vegetable Sauce
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
1/3 cup milk
1/4 teaspoon monosodium glutamate
Soak 1 tablespoon instant minced onion in 2/3 cup milk. Prepare biscuit mix according to package directions for rolled biscuits, using milk-onion mixture for the liquid. Roll in two 8-inch circles about 1/4 inch thick. Press one circle into well-greased 8-inch shallow round baking dish.
Brown ground beef in skillet; spoon off excess fat. Stir in 1 tablespoon instant minced onion. Add cheese, mayonnaise and parsley. Spread over biscuit in baking dish. Top with second biscuit. Flute edge.
Bake at 375 15-20 minutes. Drizzle melted butter over top; sprinkle with 1 teaspoon instant minced onion. Bake 2 minutes or until onion is toasty. Cut in wedges. Pass Vegetable sauce. Makes 5 or 6 servings
Vegetable sauce: Mix soup, milk and msg. Heat.
From the Better Homes and Gardens Casserole Cookbook, 1961
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