Farris - Casserole crazy: hot stuff for your oven!

Table of Contents

Foreword

I met Emily for the first time at a reading in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She came up to me at the bar before I was to go on, complimented me on the electric blue heels I had used my rare foray into this nationally recognized Zone of Hipness as an excuse to wear, and offered to buy me a vodka gimlet. I instantly knew three things: (1) this is a woman of both taste and daring; (2) though I am generally confused and/or irritated by women of taste and daring, I somehow am quite charmed by this young woman with the adorable red hair; and (3) she will be buying me that drink.

What I didnt catch quite as immediately was that this was also a chick who could throw together a mean casserole. I think it may have been the context that threw me off the scent at first. Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for those who dont know, is not a place one generally associates with comfort food. You can ironically drink Pabst Blue Ribbon in your ironically worn wifebeater until the cows come home, but finding a tuna casserole like Mom used to make (well, depending on your mom of coursemy mom was actually a master at King Ranch Chicken, which is the Texas casserole of choice) is a job of work. In fact, you pretty much have to make it yourself: which is where Emily comes in.

When she tells the story of how we met, Emily will claim that she stalked me. Dont you believe it. What Emily did was connect me. She is a connector of people. All kinds of people. And as it turns out, casseroles are one of the essential tools of her trade.

By the end of the evening, she had convinced me, a party-phobe and generally misanthropic personality, to join her and a hundred of her closest friends for her birthday celebration the following week. At that surprisingly enjoyable party and in the time since, Ive met many of Emilys friendspolitical activists, kickball players, and untold bloggers among them, plus one amateur burlesque dancer and professional knitter whom Emily met on the subway after shethe pro-knitter, I meanhad just bailed on a date shed found through www.seekingarrangement.com. And often Ive met these friends while eating casserolea smorgasbord of casseroles, five or six in a night sometimes, all served in the incommodious kitchen of Emilys apartment, which would rate as cozy on CraigsList, for sure. As one of those rare birds, the New York City apartment cook, I already knew that a home-cooked meal could bring together the friends and family you have; what Emily taught me with her Mac and Corn, Beet and Potato au Gratin, and Grown-Up Tuna Noodle casseroles was that food could also introduce people as strangers and leave them sated friends.

But thats really what casseroles are all about, when you come down to it. Think church socials and firehouse fund-raising dinners, all those Midwestern traditions that seemin Brooklyn, anywayan unreal remnant of a Rockwellian past few of us ever really experienced.

Its a funny thing about casseroles. Theyre so simple, just a few diverse ingredients bound up into one delicious dish. That binder, be it stock or cream sauce or, my favorite, lots of gooey cheese, is what makes the casserole so inviting, and so communal. Casseroles can be wrapped, carried, reheated. Casseroles are for sharing, not just with the people you are comfortable with (or maybe stuck with) at your dinner table, but with folks you might not have met before you both dipped spoons into the same disposable tin pan laid out on the long tables of the community rec center.

So I guess, in my now-tortured metaphor, Emily is the gooey cheese. Not only does she bring people together with her food but she also brings together whole regions. Not content to rely solely on the comfort-food strengths of her Missouri roots, she looks to the hip, the ethnic, the sophisticated streets of New York for inspiration. The results are brighter, lighter dishes bursting with surprising flavors and wit. Theyre like what would happen if an Elk Lodge member and an amateur burlesque dancer met and hit it off famously. They are totally appropriate for digging into at the hippest Billyburg party around. You can even wash them down with your ironic PBR.

If you must.

Introduction

I have only followed one recipe from start to finish in my life. It was on my twentieth birthday. Id been in New York two years and wasnt much of a cook, as everyone in my family knew. In addition to my fear of knives, no one had ever taught me to prepare anything other than tricolor Rotini with butter and Parmesan, and I had never really cared to learn. But it was common knowledge that tuna noodle casserole was this Missouri girls favorite thing in the entire world to eat. So on my birthday, when a giant box arrived in the mail from my aunt Susie, I was not at all disappointed to find everything I needed to make her famous tuna noodle casserole, including her secret ingredient, Salsa Con Queso Cheez Whiz, a can of French-fried onions, and a brand-new Pyrex dish, complete with a lid. Shed even sent a bottle of wine (very exciting for a twenty-year-old). Most important, however, was that shed typed up and packed step-by-step instructions, including Bring a medium pan of water to a boil (on top of the stove, not in the oven). Though I knew that much, the directions were very helpful.

The next time I made the dish, I left out the Cheez Whiz and added extra white onion. Before long, I was a tuna-noodle-casserole-making machine, but I was adding my own special ingredients. While I loved Aunt Susies classic tuna noodle, and always will, I was secretly testing my culinary capacity with Grown-Up Tuna Noodleadd artichoke hearts and freshly grated Parmesan cheese; hold the Cheez Whiz and French-fried onions.

And thats how this book was borntaking the tried-and-true recipes of my childhood, and giving them more spice, or sophistication. Ive collected nearly fifty casserole cookbooks dating from 1920 to 1999, and I consult them often, usually for inspiration. I follow instructions until the halfway point and then decide I can do it better. Sometimes I can; other times it ends in complete disaster.

But looking at cookbooks, to me, is like looking through fashion magazines: I see combinations I wouldnt have thought up on my own or am inspired to try something crazy. Both give me a starting point. Both also give me ambition and direction. But, with both, I know that when it comes down to it, its about what I can afford and what I lovenot what someone tells me to love.

Sometimes I take the old recipes and just give them bacon or less butter. Other times, its as simple as using a fresh sweet potato as opposed to canned. And with certain dishes nothing but a canned ingredient will do. But every once in a while, its a little more complicated.

I come from a meat-and-potatoes kind of place, where no one is allergic to anything (or so we like to tell them), and vegetarians are few and far between. Vegans might as well have purple faces and two noses. After moving to Brooklyn, and sharing the dinner table with vegans, vegetarians, and lactards (my friend Mikes term for people who are lactose intolerant, see Lactards Surprise on page 128), I couldnt send out a dinner party invitation without asking for dietary restrictions and preferences. It didnt take me long to realize that, while the culinary world may revolve around carnivores, the real world does not.