Casserole Over - Recap

Sunday afternoon finds a mild-mannered cook and his faithful cur out for a drive. Tempted by savory aromas, the cook finds his way to the Paces Ferry United Methodist Church and there spots an array of tasty looking casseroles. Alas, looks are all they have; these dishes are less enjoyable to the taste buds. The broccoli was salty and insipid; the chicken pot pie looked promising but the salty crust concealed canned vegetables and a greasy sauce. And something called Peking Surprise was a surprise all right...

Too bad, then, when the church ladies bust the cook “like Goldilocks.” It’s too dry to light a bonfire to roast HIM, so they send him to his own kitchen to replace the dishes he sampled, and they keep his faithful cur for insurance that he’ll return!

Back in his kitchen the cook bones up on casserole knowledge. He’s pretty sure the word comes from the French for “sauce pan” (and to there from Middle French, Middle Latin, and on back to a Greek word for cup). Any wide and shallow pan with two handles and a lid is a casserole. It could be metal or glass.

The cook visits friends at the Georgia Institute of Technology to learn about these materials. They teach him that glass is amorphous, with random arrangement of atoms that discourages the transfer of heat; this property also applies to electricity, making glass an excellent insulator. Metal’s atoms are arranged in a neat crystal lattice that shares electrons readily, transferring heat (and other energy) efficiently and quickly. Glass is slo to heat and slow to cool, metal is quick to heat and just as quick to cool.

The cook didn’t want to give away his casseroles, so he devised an alternative: a large clay flower pot. But what to put in it? Few recent periodicals mention casseroles, so the cook turns to a nutritional anthropologist. She tells him how American cooks perfected the casserole as a one dish meal. Magazines in the 1950’s and 1960’s told cooks casseroles would set them free – casseroles that relied on the space age processed ingredients those magazine pitched in glossy ads!

Seeing this conversation going nowhere, the cook turns to his box of recipes. It contains many casserole recipes, including versions of all the recipes from the church table. But all of them rely on processed foods like Cream of Mushroom Soup, with a staggering nine hundred milligrams of sodium per serving! The cook is not surprised that casseroles fell from grace!

Studying many casseroles, the cook deduces some properties. Casseroles are either bound, like broccoli or tuna, or they are layered like lasagna and mousaka, or they are scoopable like bean or pot pie. They have one or two main ingredients, a starch, some aromatics, some seasoning and a binder like eggs.

Ready to start, the cook grabs broccoli and mushrooms from the refrigerator. A pack of ramen noodles will provide starch, while the ramen flavor pack and some salt and pepper provide the spice. For binding and flavor the cook employs a tasty mixture of yogurt, mayo, eggs, cheddar cheese and bleu cheese dressing.

He starts by putting a pot of water on to boil. While it heats he cuts broccoli, peeling and quartering the stems so they’re done cooking at the same time as the crowns. He adds salt to the water and then dumps in the broccoli. A quick cook liberates oxygen and reveals the proper bright green color of the vegetable; the cook retrieves the broccoli and drops it in ice water to halt the cooking process and preserve the green color.

Next the cook sautés mushrooms in a pat of butter and adds the broccoli, then mayo, yogurt, bleu cheese dressing and the eggs. With the pan at low heat and additional fat present the eggs will not scramble. Half the cheddar and the noodles go in next and get stirred. (Ramen noodles have already been cooked and deep fried, so they can go in “raw” this way.) Finally the flavor pack goes in and the cook spoons the mixture into a casserole he has prepared with non-stick spray. He has selected a casserole that requires tight packing of the ingredients; this yields a moist and sliceable product. Looser packing would yield a crisper product. The cook peppers the top and adds the remaining cheddar; it will act as a delicious crust and a binder. The casserole goes into a 350º oven for 45 minutes (covered, please), and then the cook removes the lid to let the crust brown a bit. After it comes out the cook lets it cool for a half hour so the starch and proteins can set before he tries to cut it.

While that cooks the cook contemplates chicken pot pie. It starts with leftover chicken, and since the cook is pressed for time he uses a medley of frozen vegetables he keeps on hand that he will augment with onion and his favorite aromatic, celery. He starts by sweating these in canola oil, then pushes them to the side and mixes flour, curry powder and butter into a roux in the middle.

Meanwhile, the vegetable medley goes onto a half sheet pan to be roasted, and the cook heats chicken broth and milk until just shy of boiling. He pours that mixture into the aromatics and roux, then allows it to boil for just a minute to gelatinize the flour. He adds the roasted vegetables and – oh, yeah – the chicken! Then he spoons the mixture into a terra cotta flower pot try lined with heavy foil, packing it tightly to force out air.

The cook opens some puff pastry and pinches the seams to keep it from coming apart when he rolls it. Using flour and a rolling pin he rolls out the pastry and then docks it (uses a fork to make small steam holes). He cuts it into rounds (push down and then twist to keep the layers of pastry separated). The cook arrays the resulting dozen or so rounds atop his casserole and slides it into a 350° oven (unlidded) for 45 minutes. Once this cools the sauce will be scoopable rather than spoonable.

The cook packs his casseroles, but he still has one to go and not so much time. He pulls some leftover Chinese and some whipping cream from the fridge, and some more chicken broth (prompting the narrator to wonder if he has “stock” in that company). The broth goes into a saucier over high heat and the cook mixes in a slurry of corn starch and cold water that will thicken well below boiling. Some red pepper and the heavy cream go in, then the cook pours this over two pints of leftover garlic shrimp and a pint or so of white rice in another terra cotta “baking dish.” A couple of jiggles work sauce into the casserole and then it goes into the oven for 45 minutes at 350°.

The church ladies are impressed, and the cook is reunited with his dog! The moral of the story is that if one is going to dine uninvited, one must have a firm grasp of cooking science, good ingredients... Alton interrupts the narrator, who manages to croak out a strangled “and they all lived happily ever after on... Good Eats.”

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