In The Defense Of The Casserole

I defend yee, oh humble casserole, you collection of concocted goodies that as much as I munch and nibble delicately I can never quite keep you in the perfect squares that are advertised on the front of the frozen dinner boxes. You are whatever was left in the fridge—the stone soup of pasta (perhaps) dinners for those of us too lazy to go out to the store and find the “proper” ingredients for a “real” meal.

Do you not beckon the survivor in us? The handy man? The crafty cook? The Kitchen MacGuyver ? Is that an onion I spy—still good (I hope) in the back of my vegetable drawer? A-ha! A can of tomato sauce lying around from spaghetti night a few months ago, in it goes! O-ho! This beef is only one day bad, a good toss in the frying pan will kill whatever decided to feast its fangs, proboscis, or whatever it is bacteria and fungi use to make beef go bad, into it. Add some peppers, tortilla chips, a good ole’ layer (or two) of Kraft cheese product, and voila—a perfectly good taco casserole ready for lunch, dinner, or midnight snacking.

But enough of my rambling—upon reading M.F.K. Fisher’s “Nor Censure Nor Disdain,” I immediately wanted to jump to the defense of one of our most staple, creative, and widely “available” dishes. And while M.F.K. Fisher’s  message may have been obscured by being a victim of her times and the arid humor of the New Yorker, I was under the distinct impression that Fisher believed that the every-day casserole was below herself. “Distinctive rules” of a casserole dish?  Bah! While of course there are rules cooking that we must abide by in order to not turn a croissant into crater and too keep ourselves from adding some extra skin or hair into the mix, but the beauty of the casserole is within its mystery. Cooking a casserole can be fun and (for us starving English majors) sometimes an act of necessity. What Bourdain celebrated, Fisher seems to find quant, serving her own “exceptional” casserole as prime example of what one must do in order to become the casserole cooking champion.

Overall, what I garnered from M.F.K. Fisher was the idea that there is a “proper way to do food,” and an “improper way to do food,”—bringing it down to simple terms—something which I vehemently disagree with. Food can be a celebration of creation, an exploration of palettes, and an act of savory survival—and to restrict it seems to be almost asinine. It changes and grows with us, depending on where, when, what, and who we are. There isn’t a line to define that.

-Sparring with scribbles

E. Clark