"casseroles" news and stories

For the last couple of weeks, I've been posting links to good Thanksgiving sides. Some of them have come from the recesses of my brain and some of have been pinched from other sites. I thought it might be helpful to round all those posts up in one place so that you can see some options in one place and narrow down your finalist dishes.

It all started with the Autumnal Casserole I made that combined potatoes, squash and cheese into one creamy, savory dish. Next came the Vanilla Flecked Sweet Potato Puree that Heidi at 101 Cookbooks posted a couple of years ago. Kim O'Donnel's Parsnip-Potato Mash was next, followed by Alanna's recipe for Cauliflower Cream (the recipe she posted today for a Spinach Casserole also looks like a winner). Finally, there was my cousin Jeremy's recipe (if you can call my loose instructions a recipe) for Gingery Squash.

If after all those posts, you still don't think you have enough side dish options, I'd also like to point you in the direction of the oven roasted brussels sprouts I made last month. They are also excellent (and add a nice, green counterpoint to your plate) on the Thanksgiving table.

• This week, we not only find out which store-bought marinara sauce is the best, but we also find out just what the hell that is in the picture on the right (at first I thought it was something from Lileks' Gallery of Regrettable Food, but maybe that's too harsh).
• Don't freak out about what to make for dinner. How about a stew or casserole in a big, cast-iron pot?
• Mmmmm...marinara sauce.
• Who makes the best moussaka?
• A frat boy's wet dream: beer...coming out of faucets!
• Ask the cook: should you rinse your pasta with cold water after you cook it? (Scroll down)

I've decided to finally approach my fears head-on and make cassoulet. I've searched high and low for a good recipe and found a couple of great blueprints. I linked to this extremely detailed post on cassoulet when I spoke of it before, and I'm printing it out to use as a guide through my adventure.

Before you can make cassoulet, you have to decide how you're going to handle the meats. Most cassoulets are centered around duck, and use several parts of the bird. A classic rendition has the chef roasting the duck, rendering the fat, and making a 'confit' of the leg and a demiglace (French for stock) of the carcass. What's more, after all that, you have to select which other meats to include.

I made a critical decision when faced with my favorite butcher's meat counter and decided to buy duck confit already made. Brilliant no? It's pictured here. I also decided to go without the authentic duck stock and just buy storebought chicken broth. Hey, I don't have 48 hours to make this thing. I need cassoulet to be easy, or it's not happening.

Want to cook this live with me tonight? You'll have to head to the market. Here's what you'll need:

Tuna casserole is, likely, the ultimate in American food. It's not hamburgers, no, it's not meatloaf, and it's definitely not apple pie. The French invented apple pie, after all, and the Viennese probably developed the precursor to meatloaf. They eat hamburgers everywhere.

But tuna, mixed with noodles, cheese and one of a variety of canned or frozen vegetables: that's got to be America's very own. Tuna casserole is to America what cassoulet is to the French: every homey cook has her own recipe, one of endless variations on a common theme (a blueprint, if you will).

Every tuna casserole has one thing in common: tuna. Let's say, for the sake of argument, two cans of the stuff - that's 12 ounces, or 1 1/2 cups, or about 350g. And let's say every casserole is cooked in a three-quart casserole dish, in a 400F oven for 25 minutes. For most of these recipes, you can basically follow my aforementioned tuna casserole blueprint; I'll point out differences in procedure along the way.

I'm going head to head these days with some of the uber-popular, uber-convenient packaged foods out there, just to see how well they compare with the homemade originals. Yesterday I tried beef stew in a therapeutic attempt to overcome my childhood spent with Dinty Moore. Today, it's a meaty cheesy noodle casserole. Will it do better than than Hamburger Helper to help her hamburger make a great meal?!

Yes, homemade did a bazillion times better.

It's not that it was much different in appearance, but the difference comes from the quality of the ingredients. Unless you're making it from scratch or buying super-premium pasta, the noodles are about the same. However, there is a big difference when you make a meat-based tomato sauce from scratch and add your own hand-shredded cheese.