Usually called the doctor. Or the caretaker.

I made a casserole the other night for the first time in a really long time. (I have on occasion in the past ten years made a sort of lasagne jumble, but I don't feel it counts as a casserole, probably because it lacks all the components except "some kind of pasta".)

My mother was an inveterate maker of casseroles. This was her favourite:

1/2 bag egg noodles, the broad sheetlike floppy ones
1 can off-brand cream of mushroom soup, low-sodium if possible, such that it contains no hope of flavour
2 to 3 cups frozen peas
1 can corned beef-like substance¹

Boil the egg noodles until they are slightly overdone, then partially drain them and leave them to sit slumping in the remaining water like a sulky child in its bath. Dump the undiluted cream of mushroom soup (in which nary a mushroom may be seen) into a large casserole and scoop the noodles in on top. Stir them together with a flagellant, punishing motion. Add the peas. Continue to chastise until thoroughly mixed. Slice the beef-like substance and shingle the top of the mixture.

Put in a 350° oven until everyone feels a sense of impending doom. This usually only takes about 20 minutes, but on a good tv night it may take longer. Persevere. Remove and serve.

Her other go-to dinner was this one:

A lot of rice
1 can of tuna in water
1 can off-brand cream of mushroom soup, low-sodium if possible²
2 or 3 cups of frozen peas
bread crumbs or grated cheddar

Cook the rice, burning it to the pan in the process, because you are a terrible cook. Leave the enamelled rice pan, now encrusted with carbonised rice, to your daughter to wash, shouting at her if she cannot scrub away the discolouration from the white enamel interior. In a large casserole, dump the cream of mushroom soup, the can of tuna, drained, and the frozen peas. Prod inexorably at the tuna until it loses all sense of cohesion and falls into minute specks. Stir firmly, adding rice scooped from the still-unburnt centre of the pan. Top with breadcrumbs or, as a special treat, breadcrumbs and a minute amount of grated cheese. Bake in a 350° oven until you can stand it no longer. Remove and serve.



1. If you have never seen it, it looks like this. Be afraid.


2. After my sister was born, my mother decided that sodium was bad for babies and stopped using salt. I'm surprised we didn't all get goiters.

No, not that kind of found; I have not become a freegan.

1 can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
a good handful of kalamata olives, painstakingly pitted
a shallot, diced
2 jalapenos, finely sliced (one red and one green, though this is not mandatory)
enough capers
salt and pepper
1 lime (hard, but again, this is not necessary, and probably suboptimal)
olive oil
tahini

Drain and rinse the chickpeas and let them sit in the strainer while you pit the olives, dice the shallot, and chop the jalapenos. Put them all in a bowl together and stir them around some. Salt and pepper them. Put a good amount of olive oil and a good spoonful of tahini in a jar with a lid together, cap it securely, and then shake it really hard. You could add the juice of a lime now, but I like to do it later because then you know for sure how much you're putting in. Pour the result over the chickpea-olive-shallot-jalapeno salad and stir it around. Taste it and think. Juice the lime into the same shaking jar and shake it again to get the last of the olive oil and tahini mixture, and then pour it carefully, tasting, over the salad and stir it in. Add the capers, taste, and ponder whether you need more salt and pepper. If you do, add them.

Give it a good stir and then gobble it. Wish you had had some fresh parsley. Drink a lot of water, what with the jalapenos and shallot. Feel completely vindicated about the absolutely horrific morning breath you'll have by how tasty and good for you it is.

If you are me, you will eat half of it for dinner and save the other half (despite the horrible breath issues and the teaching) for lunch tomorrow.

maybe 200 grams/half a pound of button mushrooms (or anything else that strikes your fancy)
a shallot
salt (some)
sufficient butter (3-4 TBS?)
allspice (some)
flour (enough)
beef stock (300 mL?)
coffee cream (200 mL? or so?)
black pepper
brandy (2 splashes)

A bunch of little bowls for the shallot and the shroomies, a knife, a cutting board, a couple of spoons, a big fork, and a saucepan (lid optional).

Dice the shallot. Put it in a bowl. Wipe the mushrooms down, stem them, and mince the stems. Put the result in a little bowl. Pick the smallest caps and slice them. Put the sliced caps in a separate little bowl. Make a determination in whatever way pleases you about the rest of the caps and either slice and add them to the slice bowl, or cut them a bit finer (I sliced one way across the cap then turned them and sliced the other way, making them long skinny pieces) and put them in yet a third bowl.

Now you're ready. Put the saucepan on the stove on medium high heat and put the butter and salt in the saucepan. Slosh it briskly several times like you do. When the butter is hot and foamy but not browning, put the shallots in. Slosh it briskly and let it cook till the shallots are at the proper stage of doneness. Add the stems and slosh. Now would be a good time to add the allspice, though I forgot till the last minute and it was still nice. Add the skinny bits of mushroom. At this point you will need to start stirring. It will look like you are shy on butter. DON'T ADD MORE. Everything will be fine. Go drink some orange juice. Come back and add the slices. Stir. Still refrain from panicking about the lack of liquid. All shall be revealed (and dampened) in the fulness of time. Stir everything around some until you are happy.

Sprinkle the flour into the mushroom-shallot-butter goo. Stir briskly with the fork to avoid lumps. You should have already taken the top or whatever off your stock so you can just pour it in at the right moment. Pour the stock in in several long glugs, stirring between. Your soup looks like chunky wallpaper paste, but you should not worry. Now would be a good time to turn the heat down a bit. Drink more orange juice and let it cook for a few minutes.

Add the cream and stir. Let it simmer and add the pepper and a few splashes of brandy. Stir. You have created soup.

Cut a few slices of rosemary-olive-oil bread and a generous chunk of brie, pour the soup into a soup bowl or a big wide mug and put the bread and brie around the matching plate. Eat it while listening to Ra Ra Riot. It is nice paired with OJ with a splash of brandy, but what wouldn't be?

This will serve one hearty eater or two people with my appetite. Decreasing would be difficult, but soups increase nicely, so invite lots of people over and go nuts.

Tasty Tuesday, the May edition, featured:
( Bread, soup, lemon cake, failcakes, brownies )

radiatore pasta (boil in salted water as usual etc)

bechamel until it is enough
about a cup of shredded cheddar
a good lump of bleu cheese, crumbled
salt and pepper

Stir the two together in an oven safe bowl with a cover, top with breadcrumbs and dabs of butter like a crumble, cover, bake at 350 for 20 minutes, then uncover and bake for as long as it takes to wash the dishes by hand. Remove from oven and nom.

For next time: more kinds of cheese, a little dab of mustard, possibly some cayenne pepper, and hopefully washing the dishes in the dishwasher (our dishwasher is supposed to be fixed early next week!).

I made black bean soup the other day, and did it a little differently than usual. It turned out really nicely, so I thought I'd preserve it for posterity.

A little butter in the bottom of a saucepan
Half a carrot, sliced
garlic
some onion if you like (I didn't have any)

Saute it till the carrot is bright (and probably till the onion is translucent), then add

450 mL of beef broth
a can of black beans
chili powder (a palmful)
cumin (a palmful)
salt and pepper
Worcestershire sauce

Cook it for a while, and then blend it with your immersion blender till it's smooth and let it simmer a bit before serving.

For dinner tonight I felt like comfort food, so I made penne in sauce Mornay.

Set a pan large enough for the penne and full of salted water on to boil. Chop two large button mushrooms, grate 50 or 75 grams of gouda, and slice up three or so sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil. When the water first starts to bubble, throw a lump of butter (2 tablespoons, maybe?) into a saucepan and melt it. When the water is boiling, add the penne. Return to the butter for the nonce. When it is melted but not bubbling, sprinkle in a generously heaped serving spoon of white flour and whisk it briskly in. Add some milk (goat in this case) and whisk until your arm falls off or it becomes a bechamel, whichever happens first. Add more milk until you have the volume and/or consistency desired (about a cup should be plenty). Add the grated cheese and continue whisking. Taste and season with salt, pepper, dijon mustard, etc--whatever you like. At this point the pasta should be done. Drain it, don't rinse, and fold it hot into the Mornay, then adding the sliced mushrooms and the sun-dried tomatoes. Remove from heat and let stand for a few minutes so that the mushrooms soften and the pasta is cool enough to eat.

Gobble down, wish it were not so filling so you could eat even more of it.

A double handful of dried pasta is enough for two meals for me.

Okay, so here was the soup.

( Soup of the evening, beautiful soup. )

I was really pleased with how this worked out, although I would have preferred a thicker soup (see above re more flour next time) and I think maybe white onions rather than yellow, next time. I will definitely be making this again. I may also experiment with verginiamaro's white version, which uses vegetable broth and sherry instead of beef broth and (optional) red wine, and is highly, highly tasty.

I acquired foodstuffs, and prepared a nutritious and tasty dinner at home!

I made penne with tomato cream sauce that had mushrooms and garlic and sun dried tomatoes in it, and had it with a lovely salad with the rest of the mushrooms (these raw) and some blue cheese.

Recipe-ish thing:
( Food is love; so are cuts )
For next time (and there will definitely be a next time), I think I'm going to try adding a little oregano or rosemary (or both), and just a tiny bit of freshly grated asiago or parmesan--or fontina! Not that I can probably get fontina here in the The Land of Ridiculously Expensive Cheese. I'm still refining the flavour of the sauce. It's easily the equal of anything I've bought commercially in a jar, although the Italian place down the street from my house in Kansas has a tomato cream sauce that makes me want to put down a tarp and roll around in it deliriously, so that's kind of what I'm going for.

I also bought my own butter, so I can stop poaching my roommate's and feeling bad about it, some cream cheese because it was on sale, and 3 boxes of a generic mac and cheese that's actually quite good as well as considerably cheaper than Kraft (hush, they were on sale, and they make an okay dinner with a salad if you aren't feeling inspired). Oh, and some yogurt as I ran out last week. I am a yogurt snob. Here I eat Astro Balkan-style. And I bought Perrier because I've got to stop drinking Coke, but I like something a little more flavourful than the horrid tap water in my apartment, which tastes like the inside of pipes. I also got a bottle of balsamic vinegar, as I finally see the end of my Costco Rosenborg cheese approaching. All told I spent about $35CDN, but a lot of it is stuff that is very stapley and will last, and it's all good stuff. Takeout too often is a false economy, even when there's just one of you and you can't cook very well for one yet.

Success.

Basically, you want at least a 1:1 ratio for the water and chickpea flour, and then olive oil till it seems right.

I did 2 cups warm water, 2 1/2 cups chickpea flour, about 3 TBS olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and a little cumin. Let the batter rest for a bit, and then pour it into a pan with rather a lot of olive oil in the bottom and bake it. I tried it at 400° until the top was solid, first. It was done all the way through, but it broke when I tried to take it out.

I am trying the second batch at 275° for more like half an hour and we'll see.

It is really delicious.

However, in the course of baking things for lunch, my blood sugar ended up dropping, and because I was eating cecina and pesto ham and drinking unsweetened iced tea, it just wasn't rising (protein and complex carbs really don't break down fast enough to avert Blood Sugar Crisis) I ended up eating a spoon of honey. :P I hate having to do that. I mean, it hits fast, but...ugh.

Wu ate a green olive and pronounced it Food.