Baked Onion Casserole from Iowa

I knew it, Erma. A week can’t go by with out you liquoring up a good recipe.

That Kentucky Prune and Black Walnut Bread sounds so good that I am going to make a loaf this afternoon. Lucky for me that I always have a jar of brandied prunes ready to use.

Brenda’s new daughter-in-law brought an interesting casserole to the dinner yesterday. Nice to learn that some of the younger women can cook. She said it was one of those dishes that her family always had, and she could not bear the thought of Thanksgiving without it.

It’s Iowa Baked Onion Casserole because her family is from western Iowa. Duh. Since you all love onions, I thought you might want to try this out.

Iowa Baked Onion Casserole:

2 pounds of onions, thickly sliced
8 slices buttered toast
¼ pound Cheddar or American cheese
2 eggs
2 cups milk
½ teaspoon salt
Dash pepper
1 tablespoon butter
Paprika

Cook the onions in boiling, salted water until tender. Place half of the toast in a 13 x 8 inch baking dish. Arrange a layer of onions and a layer of cheese over the toast. Repeat with a second layer.

Beat eggs slightly with a hand whip. Add milk, salt and pepper. Pour over the onions and dot with butter. Sprinkle on paprika. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

Serves 8

Pre-Thanksgiving Ideas

Well, Erma, here we are at Thanksgiving Week. That wonderful holiday when all we have to do is cook. NO presents to buy or wrap, not a lot of decorating the house, no cards or thank you notes, no butchered favorite Christmas carols on the radio. Just food, food food!!

As always, the women’s magazines are full of advice for cooking that Perfect Turkey. Eeee gads. Could anything be easier? The only trick to a huge Thanksgiving dinner is timing–especially if you don’t have 2 ovens.

And don’t you just love it when the magazine writers suggest a small turkey breast so, “You don’t have leftovers.” Leftovers is what that huge turkey meal is all about.

Maybe Food Editors don’t want any leftovers, but I certainly do.

My friend Martha always gives away everything that is not eaten for dinner. What a dodo!

Fix enough for Thanksgiving Day, and you don’t have to cook for at least the rest of the weekend. How much better does it get? In fact the rule at my house is, all that I will do is reheat things until at least Monday, and then we get turkey sandwiches for the lunchboxes.

To me it isn’t Thanksgiving without that faithful Leftover Turkey Pie recipe you shared with me a lifetime ago. And what could be easier? Take a pottery pie plate or casserole, line it with leftover mashed potatoes, put down a layer of dry dressing, top with an inch or so of turkey bits left from stripping down the carcass, and pour over some leftover gravy. Top with foil or a lid and bake for about 25 minutes .Slice and serve with cranberry relish and reheated rolls. Divine!! And Easy!!

All good cooks have a Basic Casserole recipe that they pull out around Thanksgiving. Here is mine. Note that the amounts and ingredients are just general. As they say in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie about the rules for parley, “They’re not exactly rules, they are more like guidelines.” And Guidelines is what this dependable recipe is all about. You can use chicken, turkey, crab, imitation crab and two cups is just a guideline. The crumb topping can be anything you like, including crushed potato chips, chow mein noodles, or canned French Fried Onions.

I like to use some green onion tops and some chopped red pepper (Remember that if you are as thrifty as we are dear, you have frozen some onion tops and red pepper back when we were trying to give it away?) Mostly they just add a bit of color. Like any casserole, here is the chance to use up those bits of dried out cheese.

I usually halve this and it makes 3 dinner servings and 3 smaller homemade TV dinners for the next day. So, yep, it reheats in the microwave well.

The BASIC Casserole:

2 cups chopped Meat (Turkey, Chicken, Crab)
1 can (10 ounces) cream of chicken soup, undiluted
1 cup sour cream
¾ cup mayonnaise
3 hard-cooked eggs, chopped
1 can (4 ounces) mushroom stems and pieces, drained
1 tablespoon finely chopped onion
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 cup shredded cheese (any kind, but cheddar gives a yellow tint to the casserole)
½ cup crushed cornflakes (buttered cracker crumbs, dry bread crumbs, even dry dressing)
2 tablespoons melted butter
Paprika
Choose From the following:
2 celery ribs, chopped
8 ounce can drained and chopped water chestnuts
Half a red pepper, chopped
Tops of several green onions chopped
Sliced almonds

Mix the meat, cream of chicken soup, sour cream, mayonnaise, eggs, mushrooms, onions, lemon juice. Select some items from the Choose From Section depending on your taste and what you have in the kitchen. Stir all together and place in a greased 13 x 9 inch casserole. I make half of this and use a 9 x 9 or 10 x 10 inch casserole. Sprinkle on the cheese.

Melt the butter and mix with the topping of cornflakes, cracker crumbs, or dry bread crumbs. Dust on some paprika. Bake, uncovered at 350 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes until bubbley.

Serves 8 generously. More like 12 to 14 unless you are feeding fieldhands.

Country Music's Carolyn Dawn Johnson's Favorite Recipe

Shades of that old saying,” You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.” Only with you, Erma, it goes: “You can take the girl out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the girl.” You went to Las Vegas and ending up eating Black-eyed Peas at Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill! So, why did you go to Las Vegas in the first place?

Why don’t you just mosey up to Dutch’s Corners and eat at Mel’s Diner. It has all the Country Music that is fit to play–and some that is not.

Mel collects recipes from Country Music stars and often uses them at the Diner. This is one he brought to a community pot luck supper a while back. Mel plays Carolyn Dawn Johnson’s “Got A Good Day” all the time down at the Diner, and he says that she should change the title of the song to “Got A Good Recipe” for her Carolyn Dawn’s Chicken Asparagus Casserole.

Carolyn Dawn’s Chicken Asparagus Casserole:

1 ½ pounds fresh asparagus spears, cut in half
Cooking Oil
4 boneless, chicken breast halves–rather thin, not the monster ones
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 can light cream of chicken soup
½ cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon curry powder
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Lightly oil a 9 x 13 inch casserole dish.

In a large sauce pan, boil the asparagus for 2 to 3 minutes. Drain well in a colander, and place in the casserole. Arrange the chicken breasts over the asparagus.

In a mixing bowl, mix the soup, mayonnaise, lemon juice and curry powder. Pour over the chicken. Place the lid on the casserole and bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes. Uncover and sprinkle on the cheddar cheese. Return to oven for a few minutes until the cheese is melted.

Serves 6.

Mennonite Chicken Thigh Casserole

You made bread yesterday to celebrate the return of cool weather, and I cranked out an old Mennonite chicken recipe. I was busy picking up the house, doing laundry, and getting ready to work outside in the gardens pulling weeds, so I needed a take-care-of-itself kind of recipe.

Long ago, in another life, I worked with a reference librarian who demanded that the library buy a Mennonite cookbook as our standard reference tool. Jasper insisted that all basic cooking questions could be answered from this old classic and he was right. We didn’t have Mennonites in our section of Kentucky, but their style of cooking was just like the home food that I grew up with.

As is typical of Mennonite cookery, the ingredients are things that you always have in the kitchen, are cheap (few meats are cheaper than chicken thighs), and the result is a comfort food you associate with your childhood.

Mennonite Chicken Thigh Casserole:

¾ cup white rice
2 tablespoons minced onion
2 tablespoons minced celery
1 tablespoon minced carrot
¼ cup flour
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup butter
1 ½ cups water with 1 chicken bouillon cube dissolved in it
¾ cup milk
4 large chicken thighs
Seasoned salt that has paprika
Paprika

Grease a casserole that has a tight fitting lid, about 9 x 9 inches. Sprinkle on the rice. Mince the onion, celery and carrot and sprinkle on the rice. Dust on the flour and salt. Chop the butter into small cubes and place in the casserole. Carefully pour in the liquids. Arrange the chicken pieces on top and sprinkle with seasoned salt. Cover tightly and bake at 325 degrees for 2 hours until the chicken is tender. Toward the end of the taking, sprinkle on additional paprika for color. If the mixture is still too runny, remove the top for a few minutes additional baking and a nice golden top.

Serves 4.

One Last Apple Recipe

I know, Max, that we have barely scratched the surface of apple recipes, but enough is enough! Still I had to share this one, last apple recipe with you. Except for the addition of the apples, it is your basic sweet potato casserole that everyone makes for Thanksgiving. The difference here is the apples and the fact that the fruits are left in chunks and not mashed as is usual.

No, of course, the original recipe did not call for bourbon, but bourbon and sweet potatoes just go together like crackers and peanut butter. They are a natural mix. This recipe came from a cookbook out of New England, and you know that they do NOT use bourbon. Such a shame too.

Apple Sweet Potato Casserole:

6 sweet potatoes, baked and peeled
6 Granny Smith apples, peeled
1 stick butter
½ cup brown sugar
¼ cup maple syrup
Roughly chopped pecans
¼ cup bourbon

Use a fairly large casserole with lid, and grease well. Cut the potatoes and apples into small bite-sized pieces, mix, and put in the casserole. Pour the bourbon over the sweet potatoes and apples. Melt the butter and sugar in a small sauce pan. Add the syrup and pecans, and then pour over the top of the casserole. (Casserole can be fixed to this point up to a day early and held in the refrigerator. Allow to come to room temperature before baking the next day.) With cover on the casserole, bake for one hour at 350 degrees.

Serves 8 to 10 as a side dish. Reheats well in the microwave too.

Fall Breakfast Casserole for Tailgating

I had not thought of mulling Apricot Nectar before, but it sounds rather interesting. I like the fact that you make it up ahead of time and can store it in the refrigerator. If you were serving this is a punch bowl, or chafing dish, you could stick a few whole cloves in the other half of the lemon sliced as a decoration.

We joined the old gang Saturday morning for a Tailgate Party before the game. At first we would bring a cold picnic lunch, and then people started bringing in hot dishes, and soon the guys were barbequeing, and now that everybody comes early to the games we have to arrive so early that we begin with breakfast. Some fans stay and have a late night dinner after the game!

So now, it’s not just fix a couple of dishes to share, it is fix TWO meals to take.

There are all kinds of versions of this Breakfast Casserole around, but this one is easy and transports well. When I fixed it Friday night, I chopped in a bright red pepper for color.

Hearty Breakfast Casserole:

8 eggs
7 slices of bread
1 pound mild cheddar cheese
4 cups milk
1 package sage breakfast sausage crumbled
2 teaspoons dry mustard
Dash Worcestershire sauce

Use a firm bread, such as French or Italian or Whole Wheat. Trim off the crusts and save for another use. Cut bread into 1 inch cubes. Place the break on the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch pan. Beat the eggs with a hand whisk in a large mixing bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients. Pour over the bread. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Cook at 350 for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Serves 4 to 8 depending on the size of the servings and what else is on the menu.