Quick question: What are the recipes of Mom’s that you make a lot?Salmon croquettes?
[nervous face emoji] Text me back!"
My sister is a better, more prolific cook than I am.
Credit:Caitlin Bensel; Food Stylist: Torie Cox
(I blame not being able to easily find key ingredients, like grits.)
But her response confirmed what I thought: “Hmm .
I feel like Mom focuses onappetizersanddesserts.
Credit: COURTESY OF ELIZABETH PASSARELLA
I make her mushroom turnovers and fudge pie a lot.”
The thing is, my dad was the more memorable cook in our family.
He didn’t necessarily make dinner every night.
But my dad made the cool meals.
He would flambebananas Fosterat our kitchen island, letting one of us kids light the rum.
The pork tenderloin with shallot-apricot sauce I make all the time?
Even a simple corn-and-scrambled egg dish that I now serve my kids .
It’s not cool.
You don’t light anything on fire.
It’s really, really good, though.
It is the 9-by-13 manifestation of one of my mom’s best, most saintly qualities.
That’s a great recipe."
Then, she said, “If you double it, you might get four casseroles out of it.
I just took one to Joyce.
And Dianne and Kay too.”
Joyce, Dianne, and Kay are three of my mother’s oldest friends.
It’s not rocket science;casserolesare the de facto response to illness or new babies.
But she does it so effortlessly, so unselfishly.
That way all we have to do is open a bottle of Prosecco."
So, for years, I didn’t.
I avoided not-cool chicken casserole in favor of butternut squash enchiladasor an extremely labor-intensivechicken chilithat starts with dry beans.
My mom knows better.
The Magic Of Mom’s Casserole
Recently, I’ve come around to not-cool chicken casserole.
My husband had to go to two grocery stores just to find cream of mushroom soup.
| Total 50 min.
