A Quicker, Cooler Casserole

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

At what point in time did the casserole get a bad rap? If I recall correctly, it was somewhere between the introduction of canned tuna to the mix and the invention of boxed one-dish meals ending in "Helper." It seems since we first saw the 50's housewife emerge as a picture of domestic bliss, she was consistently pictured showcasing a fine crusty topped casserole between her mitted hands. And right behind her was a happy family poised with fork and knife awaiting their turn to uncover the wonders of this mystery meal.

Cookbooks from that era seem to verify the important role of the casserole on the dining room table. My mother's Better Homes and Gardens cookbook from 1968 devotes a whole chapter to the subject. Lasagna, Chop Stick Veal Bake, Lobster Newburg--these were the makings of home cooked haute cuisine considered fancy enough to even be served for company. Another old cookbook I found is one of those compilations of recipes from members of a club, this one being the Pennsylvania Grange Cookbook from 1984. It labels its casserole chapter as "Casseroles and One-Dish Meals, Quick and Easy." If this meal was once so oft-used as to necessitate its own chapter, so highly regarded as to be served to company, and so "quick" as they say, then where did it go?

Although I am not sure exactly when and why the casserole went out of fashion (although note my speculation in the first paragraph), I can suppose why it gained popularity for home cooks and why it deserves a comeback today. First of all, it is a one-dish meal. One-dish meals require less hassle and less clean up. In addition, by their very nature they provide all the elements of a well-balanced dinner in one pan: carbohydrates, vegetables, and protein. Lastly, remember the chapter header in the Pennsylvania cookbook? The casserole is quick.

Since this column is about cooking real meals quickly, let's focus on that last part for a minute. I would guess that as we have become more obsessed with bringing a meal to the table as fast as humanly possible, even the lengthy cooking times of some casseroles was too much. It wasn't enough that the preparation took no time; even the oven wasn't allowed to be slow. So casseroles couldn't keep up. Those recipe cards moved to the back of the stack and we started flipping right past the casserole chapter until the publishers decided to remove it all together.

I dare say the casserole has not seen its last days. Waiting for uncooked pasta to bake for 90 minutes in the pan, or cooking the ingredients just to then mix them together may be activities we don't care to revisit. However, I think the real potential for a casserole--and the characteristic most useful for any busy family--is its place in giving a makeover to last night's leftovers.

Let's go back to the building blocks of a "complete" one-dish dinner. Protein: think leftover chicken, shredded or cubed, steak cut in bite-sized strips, or crumbled hamburger patty. Carbohydrates: rice is always good for another go around, mashed potatoes are über versatile, and what else where you planning on doing with dried out day-old pasta? And vegetables: it is hard enough to get your kids to eat them the first time, why not hide those cooked leftovers next to the meat and behind the potato? Finally, in order to bind these items together in a way that will unite foods that may not have debuted under the same cuisine, you need a sauce. This sauce can be salsa, tomato sauce or canned soup, to name a few.

However you combine these leftovers, make sure the food combination is colorful and the flavors pop. This is the only way to avoid the path of the lowly tuna casserole. Take my Carne Asada Casserole. It is something like you might find on a combination platter at a Mexican restaurant if you piled each component on top of each other. I started with leftover long grain rice that was a side dish with one night's supper. I added a sauteed spinach and mushroom combination that's called "Hongos" at some Mexican restaurants. I chopped up some leftover filet from steak night, and spread over a layer of refried beans. All of that I topped with some fresh and spicy salsa. Into the oven it went for just 15 minutes. I then topped it with crumbled Mexican cheese, up-ed the heat and put it back in the oven to finish heating through and to melt the cheese.

If everything that's old will be new again, it is definitely time to give our once tired casserole another chance in the limelight. A one-dish meal that will clean out your fridge and please your kids, this is a real meal cook's dream come true and it just doesn't get any cooler than that.

Serves/Makes: 6

• 3 cups left over long grain rice, Spanish or other
• 2 cups cooked mixed vegetables such as spinach and mushrooms
• 1 can (16 ounce size) refried beans
• 2 cups chopped cooked steak, strip, filet, or other
• 1 1/2 cup medium salsa
• 1 cup crumbled Queso Cotija, or other crumbling Mexican cheese, or Monterey Jack