A Casserole

After the floods, blizzards, no water, no heat, no electricity of early March, my first trip to the grocery store was joyous. I could have anything I wanted. So what was my first big meal after returning to civilization? A casserole.

We were not a casserole family. My mother never made mac and cheese. The notion of casseroles was foreign to my great aunts. They believed that if you didn't grow, you probably shouldn't eat it. They rarely ate cheese, never ate Italian, Mexican, or Chinese, never ate anything hot or spicy.  That is the reason this casserole stood out to me. My great aunt made this Mexican Chicken Casserole once.

The casserole contains chicken and an onion, staples in the kitchen. Then it went totally off my family radar.  There was a lot of cheese which we never had. There were two cans of CANNED soup, and canned soup never touched our lips. Then there was the "Mexican" element which presented itself in the form of a tiny can of chopped peppers, available in your stores International isle, and isle we never went down. The other truly authentic Mexican item was a a bag of Doritos. We never ventured down the chip/soda isle.

To make this casserole required the purchase of five items!  Three cans, a bag of Doritos and cheese!   Casserole was an event! I loved it but it was never invited back to the family table.

At home with just my mother and me, I would often make it.  In my own kitchen, I have made it with homemade soup, but after all my calamities, I just wanted comfort and this fit the bill.

Like most casseroles, there is a protein (chicken), a starch (Doritos), a sauce (two cans of cream of chicken soup), an scant attempt at a vegetable (onions and peppers), and finally a binder (cheese).  Repeat these in multiple layers, always ending in cheese and you have a casserole.

Mexican Chicken Casserole

1 bag of Doritos
3 cups cooked chicken, shredded
1 teaspoon oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 can diced peppers
2 cans cream of chicken soup (to be a real gourmet use one can cream of chicken and one can cream of celery)
2 cups grated cheddar

In a large skillet, heat the oil and add the chopped onion, cooking about three minutes until translucent.  Add the can of peppers and stir for another minute.  Add two ans of soup and heat till just boiling.

In a tall casserole dish, layer the of the dish with Doritos.  Add  1/3 of the chicken.  With the chicken in place, begin adding Doritos to the sides of the dish.  You want the Doritos to form a rough crust around the edges of the casserole.  Set a row with the wide side down, the a second row, with the pointed edge filling in the gap.  When the row is complete, add 1/3 of the sauce followed by 1/3 of the cheese. 

Add a layer of Doritos, flat on top of the cheese and then again around the edges adding 1/3 of the chicken, 1/3 of the sauce, 1/3 of the cheese.  Repeat a final time, ending with the cheese.  You will probably have leftover Doritos, just save them for something else.

Bake in a 350 oven for about 40 minutes.

When my casserole came out of the oven, I just wanted to sit on the floor next to the stove, hold it in my lap, and eat the whole thing.  I refrained. But after a tough week, one can't beat a warm, mushy, gooey, childhood treat.  Next time life sucks -- make casserole.

Bucatini with Chicken Livers and Gizzards

Not wanting to shock those people just cannot abide organ meats, we tempered this post with a photo of the Tomato Bread we made to accompany the bucatini.

Now for the offal...

Even as a child, my favorite part of the chicken was the gizzard. In D.C. last week, I stopped by Eastern Market and found a beautiful fresh bucatini which one doesn't often find fresh. Bucatini is a pasta that can stand up to anything and passing my favorite poultry vendor, I knew just what would top that fresh bucatini. I bought some chicken lives and gizzards. As they came from a reputable vendor, the gizzards were clean and neat. The problem with cooking a dish with livers and gizzards is the vast difference in cooking times. Chicken livers cook in a minute or two but the gizzards need a good hour of simmering to get them tender, or as tender as a gizzard gets. Personally, the chewiness of gizzards doesn't bother me. If you are cooking this dish for a crowd, however, dropping the gizzards in a pressure cooker for 15 minutes would be the way to go.

Bucatini with Chicken Livers and Gizzards

1 pound bucatini
1/2 pound chicken gizzards, cooked till tender
1/2 pound chicken livers
1 tablespoon flour
1 small onion, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
several sage leaves, chopped, with additional leaves for garnish
1 1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup cream
salt and pepper


In a small saucepan, add the chicken gizzards and cover with water and simmer about an hour until somewhat tender as gizzards will never get that tender.

Roughly chop the cooked gizzards and dredge with the livers in the flour.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil as you begin the sauce. Fresh pasta will take about 2 minutes, dried pasta will take about 10 minutes. You will want your pasta to be ready as the sauce is finishing. The sauce will take about 10 minutes to finish, so start the dried pasta now.

In a large skillet, add the oil and saute the onion for a minute or two. Add the gizzards and liver, being careful as chicken livers are notorious for making the oil pop. cook for about 2 minutes and add the sage. Cook another minute. Add the chicken stock, stirring to reduce. Cook for about 5 minutes. Add the cream, stirring to incorporate and cook for about 1 minute.

Drain the bucatini, reserving a bit of the water, and add the pasta to the skillet with the sauce. If the sauce seems too thick, add a bit of the pasta water to loosen it. Garnish with the extra sage.

Even the squeamish might dig into this pasta. If not, more for me!

Famous Food Friday -- Beverley Nichols

Last year Lucindaville (and Cookbook Of The Day) offered up a Famous Food Friday about Beverley Nichols and we are doing it again.

When last we were cooking with Beverely Nichols, we were pondering his "found" cookbook, In an Eighteenth Century Kitchen. This was the cookbook Nichols wrote about in A Thatched Roof. After his success with Down The Garden Path, the first and probably best known, or should I say, remembered of Nichols' books, he chose to undertake a similar culinary adventure which would become Down the Kitchen Sink. Nichols knew as little about cooking and he once did about gardening and I am sure he thought if could master gardening, why not cooking.



This is, however, Beverely Nichols, so an actual cookbook is not exactly what is presented. Even Nichols admits to this:

"This is supposed to be a cookery v book, but I suspect that it will turn out to be something rather different. True, it contains a number of Gaskin's own recipes, which, after his death, I found interlarded among the pages of the cookery books that he had collected over the years. these were sometimes scribbled over with mysterious comments on the guest who were to partake of them, such as 'No crab for Lady F'. I cannot remember any Lady F in my life, nor why she should have been denied this delicacy."

The "Gaskin" mentioned is Reginald Arthur Gaskin who was Nichols manservant for 40 years. When the writer, P.G. Woodhouse visited Nichols and was served by Gaskin, he remarked that Gaskin was, "the perfect Jeeves." While it is said that Woodhouse based his character on a butler he employed for research, Eugene Robinson, it comes as no surprise that Jeeves' Christian name is revealed in 1971 to be "Reginald" but then... Bertie was based on an earlier character named Reggie Pepper... but I digress....

Beverely Nichols, Reginald Gaskin and Nichols gardener, Oldfield.

You get the idea of Gaskin's demeanor. After forty years, when Gaskin died, Nichols found himself in his kitchen alone searching for something to eat. Nichols takes it upon himself to write a cookery book, but it becomes more of dining book filled with interesting people including but not limited to: Noel Coward, Oliver Messel, and William Randolph Hearst. His stories are wonderfully gossipy filled with dish and food.

Clearly, some of the recipes are unique to Nichols. This unnamed recipe is on Nichols "heard" about. It is by far the strangest recipe, and one you should replicate at your own risk.

Silver Chicken

I had to invent this title for this recipe does no appear in any cookery book which I have yet encountered.

You take the largest capon you can buy. It must be a whooper.

You then rinse 6 or 8 silver spoons or forks in hot water. Only silver will do; silver plate would be worse than useless.

Now, taking a firm grip of the chicken, push the silver up its behind. As if this were not enough humiliation, follow it with two heaped tablespoonful of ground ginger. All this sounds extremely sadistic but it is no more so than keeping the poor thing cramped in a cage for the whole of its unnatural life.

Having maltreated the chicken in this manner, bring a large saucepan of slightly salted water to a boil, put in the chicken, add 6 carrots and 6 medium sized onions, cram on the lid, and boil at the gallop for precisely 5 minutes.

Turn off the gas, lift up the saucepan, transport to the larder, and leave to cool overnight.

On the following morning you must be prepared for a shock. When you lift the chicken out and drain off the water, and remove the spoons and forks, you will find that they have all gone black. Do not be alarmed. A good soaking in any of the modern silver-cleaning preparations will restore them, though this may take rather longer than usual.

A chicken prepared in this manner tastes quite different from any chicken you have ever had before, unless you are at least sixty years old, and can recall the days of your youth, when a chicken really was a chicken, and not a synthetic Robot bird, reared by Robots for the mechanical digestion of other Robots. Apart from the taste, it can be carved in delicate slices, instead of falling to pieces in the manner of the average boiled chicken of today.

I cannot think of a better dinner companion than Beverely Nichols. When you try this recipe, do send us a photo -- or the chicken and the silverware!