There are few holiday dishes so polarizing as green bean casserole. If it was part of your usual Yuletide feast growing up, the stuff is sacrosanct and utterly essential to holiday joy. The bulk of it -- the french-cut green beans, cream of mushroom soup and French-fried onion strings -- must come blopping and clattering from cans and be baked in a casserole until it resembles a roiling green bog topped with a dry moss of frizzled onion straws. There are always seconds, and there's hardly ever any left over for a midnight refrigerator picnic.

If you didn't grow up with it skulking on the holiday table, good gravy, does that stuff look ten-foot-pole nasty.

There is, however, some middle (and I'd argue elevated) ground, as evidenced by my pal LeNell's recent rendition at an impromptu venison feast featuring a freshly-killed and smoked deer loin, a couple of bottles of 1970 Lafite Rothschild and a bounty of, as she called 'em, redneck casseroles. I made Charleston Corn Pudding, my husband cooked up a monumental squash casserole and, in addition to a skillet full of cornbread and some mindbending goose soup, our hostess and her visiting sis Lisa brought forth a dish we took to calling afterward Artisanal Green Bean Casserole. It damn near made up for every mouthful of the other green mush that politesse had led me to swallow for the previous three decades and change.

They'd taken the framework of the traditional recipe and carefully handmade each element, from the decadent, dairy-rich mushroom soup to the freshly-fried onion straws and tender-crisp green beans. The net effect was staggering, and had we not also all been staggering as well (did I mention that LeNell owns the best liquor store in all the land and also busted out the 900th Anniversary Chartreuse, Charbay Alambic Whiskey and a host of heavenly bitters after dinner?), I'd have had the wherewithal to ask her to write down the recipes.

In light of my failings, I've done my best to share my favorite versions of a few of the key components. If you've got another time-tested method, please post it in the comments below.


Cream of Wild Mushroom Soup (adapted from The Complete Book of Soups and Stews by Bernard Clayton)

1 lb wild mushrooms
4 oz butter
3 cups milk or light cream
2 tbsp flour
salt and pepper, to taste
3 - 4 tbsp heavy cream if desired

If wild mushrooms are used, soak in salted cold water for 3 - 4 minutes to get rid of insects. If domestic, simply brush with a damp cloth.

Slice or chop the mushrooms and cook in 2 ounces of butter in a medium skillet. Cover and cook for about 10 minutes or just until tender.

Chop the cooked mushrooms in a food processor or pass through a food mill. Don't puree. Keep the particles coarse to give the soup an interesting texture.

Strain the mushrooms into a bowl to capture the cooking liquid. Set the mushrooms aside. Add milk or cream to the liquid to make a total of 3 cups.

Melt the remaining butter in a pan, stir in the flour and cook gently for a moment or so until it bubbles. Gradually add the milk mixture, stirring over medium heat until the soup is smooth and thick, about 5 minutes.

Add the mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper and bring to just a boil. Turn down heat and simmer for 2 or 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Just before stirring you may wish to spoon in the heavy cream to give it a marbled effect.


French Fried Onions (adapted from Charleston Receipts)

6 large Spanish or Bermuda onions
1 pint of milk
Vegetable fat or lard
Flour
Salt and pepper

Peel onions and cut into 1/4 inch matchsticks, cover sticks with milk and let stand for thirty minutes. Drain and dredge with flour seasoned with salt and pepper. Put some of the sticks in a wire basket, shake basket gently to remove any surplus flour. Plunge the basket in deep fat 370F and let the sticks brown delicately, shaking basket occasionally to prevent onion sticks from sticking together. Lift basket out, drain for a minute. Then turn onions into a paper lined pan to keep hot, while the remaining onions are fried. Be sure that the fat is hot before each cooking.


Shortcut French Fried Onions (adapted from Charleston Receipts)

Make a thick batter of prepared pancake flour and evaporated milk. Soak Bermuda onions, thinly sliced into matchsticks, in ice water until crisp. Dip sticks in batter and fry in deep, hot fat.