Cookie Casserole

I’ve got the blues. I’ve got the blues cuz I don’t have the blues anymore; my favorite, and really, only blues club anywhere around here, went out of business this weekend. I’ve been moping around all this gloomy weekend like my best friend passed away. I suppose I could drown my sorrows in booze, but that’s not my style, or chocolate, which is more my style, actually ice cream cures most ills. But what really sounds good is comfort food: mashed potatoes and gravy or a deep gooey casserole. If I had the umph to leave the computer and go make some. Comfort food works best when someone else is doing the comforting.

Oh well, good enough reason to pull out the Culinary Institutes’ Casserole Cook Book, 1954 and see if I can find some motivation in it.

Good golly. The first recipe in the book is for steak and kidney pie. My great grandmother came from Liverpool. She was a World War I bride and she left a legacy of steak and kidney pie as the ultimate treat at family gatherings—at least through my mother’s generation. There’s a tiny British food store in town and I’ve sometimes picked up some frozen individual serving ones for my mom for Christmas. By my generation, however, the expat fervor was running weak.

All it takes is to smell that stuff cooking…I remember scooping more than my fair share of biscuits off the top and slathering them with butter to smother the taste of the filling, then cautiously picking thru the rest of my portion with a magnifying glass to remove all kidney particles from my plate before eating it. I still have ongoing issues with eating anything that has to have the pee boiled out of it first. But for you brave souls, or maybe my mother, should I be in a particularly dutiful mood someday, here’s the recipe. It uses pie crust on top instead of biscuits and it doesn’t involve any pre-boiling of urine so try at your own risk.

Beef and Kidney Pie

Set out a 2 qt top-of-range casserole having a tight fitting cover. Remove membranes and split horizontally through the center of 1 beef kidney. Remove cores and tubes. Rinse clean in cold water. Cut into 1 inch cubes. Put into a bowl and pour in ½ c French dressing. Turn each piece of kidney to coat well. Cover bowl and let kidney marinate at least 1 hour. Turn pieces occasionally; drain.

Wipe 1 lb. beef for stewing (chuck, brisket, or rump); cut into 1 inch pieces.

Coat kidney and beef with mixture of:

2/3 c flour

1 ½ t salt

1 t MSG

¼ t paprika

¼ t pepper

Heat in casserole over medium heat: 3 T bacon drippings. Add meat and ¼ c chopped onion. Brown meat, stirring occasionally.

Combine and pour slowly into casserole:

2 ½ cups condensed tomato soup (2 cans)

1 cup hot water (or more if needed to cover meat)

1 T Worcestershire sauce

1 bay leaf

¼ t basil

Cover tightly; simmer 1 to 1 ½ hours or until meat is tender.

Heat and cook in a saucepan 5 minutes:

3 T butter

1 cup mushrooms

Remove bay leaf and add mushrooms to casserole.

If necessary to thicken liquid, shake ¾ c water and 6 T flour in a jar until well blended and slowly pour as much as needed into casserole, stirring constantly, to reach desired consistently. Bring to a boil. Cook 2-3 minutes longer.

Make pie crust and arrange rolled out pastry on top of casserole. Press edges to seal and flute. Make slits in top top vent and bake at 425 for 15 to 20 minutes or till brown.

For some reason, I still don’t feel comforted. But I do remember sitting on a play ground in Riyadh while my siblings played and my mother talked to a British lady about recipes. When they got to beef and kidney pie, the other lady was horrified at my mother’s description of how she made it. It took a little for them to realize that the American-to-British translation meant she was picturing a thick stew with cookies floating on it.