Another day of rain, and the report from my friend Kate in New Hampshire is that the slugs are out in droves. Little beasties! I hope the Maine slugs stay away from my gardens. Here at the little house in the big woods, we have armies of slugs just waiting to attack my plants, and by summer’s end, my hostas are chewed to shreds.
But let us turn our attention to a more pleasant topic like, say, casseroles. Now, I know that casseroles have a bad reputation and deservedly so. Back in the old days, when I was a child, casseroles often consisted of cream of mushroom soup, noodles, hamburg, and, the finishing touch, Veg-all. How I dreaded suppers that featured this casserole.
So for years, I avoided making casseroles the way cats avoid water. I wanted nothing to do with them. But as time went by and my cooking skills improved, I began to wonder: Could I make a tasty casserole using good ingredients? I wasn’t sure, but it seemed as though it was a challenge worth exploring. After all, casseroles are warm, hearty, and thrifty. If casseroles could be made to taste good as well, then they would be a reasonable meal to make on week nights for the family.
I decided to start with the cream of mushroom soup substitute, which, of course, is a basic white sauce made with a roux of equal parts butter and flour. But the white sauce would need jazzing up, I knew, so I added a chopped clove of garlic to the roux as it bubbled. A good move, but I found an all-milk white sauce to be still a little bland, and I decided to use half yogurt and half milk for the white sauce. The results were much better, a tangy white sauce with a nice touch of garlic. From here, there were many possibilities, but the route I took was with rice, peas, and canned salmon. Because I was using salmon, I added a teaspoon of dried dill—fresh would be even better—to the white sauce. The rest was pretty simple. Into a large mixing bowl, I emptied a can of salmon and to this I added frozen petite peas, cooked; cooked rice; and mushrooms, sliced and sautéed. I poured the white sauce over this mixture and stirred it all up. In a large buttered casserole dish, I alternated layers of the rice-salmon mixture with shredded cheddar cheese, ending with the rice-salmon mixture. On top, I put roasted almond slivers. Then, into a 350° oven it went, for 40 minutes or so, until the edges were bubbling.
The verdict from my Yankee husband, Clif? “Not too bad.” Which means good enough for seconds.
This is not a company meal—it is still too plain for that—but it is an acceptable family meal, one that won’t be dreaded and surreptitiously fed to the dog when no one is looking.
As a bonus, on a gray, damp day, there is something cozy about having a casserole bubbling in the oven. I know I’m getting all Betty Crocker here, but in a world that is often hard, cozy can be very nice indeed.
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Notes From the Hinterland 