COOKBOOK SHELF
| jIM FOBEL'S CASSEROLES |
TASTY RECIPES FOR EVERYDAY LIVING AND CASUAL ENTERTAINING
Pauline Kael once complained, in one of her New Yorker columns, that she sometimes felt she was running a home for Lost Movie Animals -- she'd seen too many films in which a pet pops into a family in one scene only to vanish completely in the next. People who spend a lot of time standing in front of cookbooks, while simultaneously keeping tabs on two or three frantically bubbling pots, will be aware of a similar phenomenon -- call it the Orphaned Ingredient(s). Two or three times in recent months, recipes have commanded me to prepare ingredients for later use, only to forget to tell me when to actually add those items to the dish. These sad strays (chopped mushrooms, whisked yolks) stare at you with upturned eyes, until you decide: What the hell, I might as well throw them in ... um ... now. I was reminded (again) of the orphaned ingredient syndrome while reading, and cooking from, Jim Fobel's splendid new cookbook, "Jim Fobel's Casseroles." Fobel, who won a James Beard Award for his last collection, "Jim Fobel's Big Flavors," is my kind of cookbook writer -- he's earthy, homey, unpretentious. He'll never be as cerebral and fun to read as, say, John Thorne, but it's hard to hate any food writer who, in 1997, opens a book by declaring: "I'm a casserole kind of guy." I like Fobel so much that I was a little depressed when, while cooking one recipe from his new book (a toothsome tarragon chicken noodle casserole), he had me set aside some sautéed onions and steamed spinach without ever reminding me, later, when to throw these things into the pot. No bother, really. Because as Fobel constantly reminds us in this otherwise non-sloppy book, casseroles are forgiving. As those of us who grew up eating them at PTA meetings and pot-luck suppers know, the best of these concoctions can be heated, reheated, plucked from steam tables, filled with frozen ingredients and still be a magnificent kind of comfort food deluxe. (The worst of them make you want to cry under the card table.) Fobel pays homage here to these good old-fashioned dishes. He may personally prefer his tuna-noodle casserole to be made from fresh tuna steaks and a homemade cream sauce, for example -- but he also includes your grandmother's version, made from canned tuna and cream of mushroom soup. Fobel's an equal opportunity nosher. A few nods to suburban history aside, the really admirable thing about "Jim Fobel's Casseroles" is the way he jump-starts this nearly-defunct culinary genre. The comfort food craze may be at its height -- in New York, restaurants are battling it out to see who can devise the most haute version of macaroni and cheese -- but there is still something a little brave about dragging casseroles out of the closet. (You can get a sense of how low the casserole has ranked in culinary circles by opening a circa-1965 copy of "Larousse Gastronomique," which sniffs: "Such a dish is very popular in homes where there are no servants to help prepare or serve meals.") Nearly all of Fobel's recipes, unlike your grandmother's, call for fresh ingredients, interesting cheeses, strong flavors. Fobel ranges across cultures, offering recipes for Chinese Lion's Cub casserole (with fresh ginger, Napa cabbage and lean pork meatballs), a Greek pasta casserole called Pasticio el Greco and some fine Mexican-influenced recipes, such as a Poblano-Beef Aztec Pie (called Budin Azteca in Mexico City) and a magnificent vegetarian Black-Bean Tamale Pie. The section on potato dishes alone is worth the price of admission. "Jim Fobel's Casseroles" doesn't quite manage to make the casserole sexy. That would be impossible. But the book does do something wonderful -- it stylishly updates multiple variations of this neglected dish, without making you forget what you loved about them in the first place. Feb. 26, 1997 Next Week: New York Press food critic Sam Sifton on "The Grapes of Ralph," illustrator Ralph Steadman's gonzo take on the wine world. |
By Jim Fobel,