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Last summer when we were in the States, we had lunch with my American Grandma and Grandpa (it was actually the last time I ever saw him, he passed away around a month ago). I was chatting with Grandma about salad dressings (for some reason). The subject of vinegarette came up, and she mentioned how she couldn't find any at her local grocery store. This confused me, not only because I can't believe they didn't sell at least 50 varieties of just vinegarette at her store, but because people here in Austria eat the salads exclusively with vinegarette, and no one buys it in a bottle. I tried to say, "Well, actually, you can just pour some oil and some vinegar directly over the salad, season with salt and pepper, and toss", but she insisted it was more complicated than that, and that you have to buy it in the bottle. So I recommended Newman's Own. But it got me thinking about how I've been forced to live virtually without the convenience foods I was used to. And I've discovered that like vinegarette dressing, many (if not most of them) aren't really that much more convenient than homemade (but more expensive and chock full of salt, sugar, preservatives and other things that probably won't hurt you, but aren't really necessary).
I thought I'd start posting some of my favorite everyday "from scratch" recipes here for reference. Boxed "helper" type mixes and bottled sauces and dressings aren't even available here, so a lot of the stuff I grew up with, I can't cook. Some of our current favorites are family recipes from my mom or Stefan's mom, others we got out of various cookbooks, others we invented ourselves.
We had a lot of leftover ham this weekend from Easter. Stefan also bought a huge bag of fresh spinach on sale for something like 60 cents, so we've been having spinach and tomato salads for the past few nights, but we have to use up this spinach before it spoils. So we made noodle casserole, one of our standbys.
For a big (9x12) casserole pan you need:
- noodles (enough to fill the casserole halfway, scroodles are best IMO)
- 2-3 eggs (seperated)
- 8 oz. of sour cream (or plain yogurt when I realized I didn't have any sour cream at home)
- 3-4 tablespoons of soft butter
- cheese (as much or as little as you want)
- other stuff to go in the casserole (such as leftover ham and in our case, spinach)
- bread crumbs to sprinkle on top
Put two pots of salt water on the stove at the same time: one to blanch the spinach or any other veggies you want to add, the other to cook the noodles. To blanch, just clean the veggies (like pinch off the stems of the spinach) and toss them into the water as soon as its boiling. With spinach, you can pretty much immediate drain it into a colander since it's done within seconds. For something like broccoli, leave it in for just a minute before draining.
Drain the noodles when done, rinse with cold water to cool them off.
In the meantime, seperate the eggs: yolks into the mixing bowl, whites into a smaller bowl. Add the butter to the yolks and set the mixer on med-high to cream them together (more or less, I don't really have the patience to wait for them to get really creamy). Add the sour cream / yogurt to that mixture. Add salt and pepper (enough for the whole casserole).
While that's mixing, cut up or grate your cheese and ham into bits. They don't have to be too small, just small enough to sprinkle them evenly over the casserole then.
When the yolk/sour cream/butter mixture is pretty well mixed, take the bowl out of the mixer and add the cooled noodles and veggies, toss them well. Beat the egg whites, fold the fluffy egg whites under the noodles (first 1/3 of the whites, then the remaining 2/3). Don't over mix this, it can be a little hetergenous, you want the little egg white bubbles to survive to help glue together the noodles.
Pour half or 2/3 of this noodley/eggy mixture into the (greased!) casserole, enough to cover the bottom anyway. Layer or sprinkle your cheese and ham on top. Cover with the remaining noodles. Sprinkle a good layer of bread crumbs on top so the noodles don't get to brown (they become unchewable). Bake in a preheated (350°F) oven for about 30 minutes. If you let it sit about 5 minutes after taking it out of the oven, it's easier to cut without it falling apart and it should still be hot enough.
The great thing about this casserole is that you get about 6 medium sized portions out of it. If you let it cool overnight, you can cut the leftover casserole into squares, which freeze well (wrapped in plastic wrap) and taste great when reheated. Also, you can toss in any kind of (non-juicy) veggie, meat or cheese that you have too much of. Leftover chicken, cauliflower, carrots, peas, leftover sausage, deli meat, etc. It takes about an hour or hour and 15 minutes from start to finish, but you have to remember you're getting at least 2 meals out of it, so if you average it out, it's pretty fast for a pretty good meal.