Coup de casserole

I never thought the prospect of a casserole for dinner would excite me. But for some reason this morning the seed was planted in my mind. I was out in the garden picking collard greens to take to the Franklin Community Center food pantry along with two dozen eggs, and the realization that we still had a refrigerator bin full of fresh Provider green beans and Royal Burgundy purple beans that I had picked after a quick frost but never had gotten around to freezing came to my mind.

"See if you can find a green bean casserole recipe," I asked my husband Jim. "Something that doesn't include a can of Campbell's soup or crumbled up potato chips."

Moments like these remind one that they spent their formative years in the Midwest.

Jim got to work, and the eighth hit in his Google search produced a Martha Stewart recipe that replaced the requisite can of soup (Cream of Mushroom is the torch bearer, I believe) with a simple homemade roux and the crumbly top with bread crumbs. All of the other ingredients were pretty much fresh-from-the-garden: the beans, an onion, shallots, and a sweet red bell pepper. We didn't have a successful shallot crop, but I figured that garlic would make a sufficient substitute. Most of our peppers went from sweet bell to very spicy before they had a chance to turn red, but I had picked up a couple of sweet red bells at the farmers market. The one ingredient that we lacked was probably the one ingredient that has made casseroles be casseroles: mushrooms, ideally the small button kind that don't really have a whole lot of flavor but can provide structure and texture to any baked dish.

"Well, we could leave them out, or think up a substitute," I said. "Or, I could go get some at Price Chopper."

Jim's eyes widened in horror. "Don't do that."

I left the house with casserole on my mind. I daydreamed about it periodically as I went through a series of errands and some writing time at the library. By the time I got home, I had figured out the substitute: a Zephyr-like summer squash that had been sitting on the kitchen counter for a few days.

It worked perfectly.

Following the recipe, sort of, I sauteed the onion, red bell pepper and summer squash together in olive oil instead of butter. Before doing that, I stir-fried the beans in the same wok-like pan that I had used for the other veggies, which meant that the overall oil was minimal. The recipe had called for boiling the beans, then immersing them in an ice bath. Although a friend has extolled the virtues of this practice because it locks in nutrients, I didn't have time for that. I did empty the beans into a bowl of cold water, which may or may not have made a difference.

Putting the casserole together consisted of tossing the beans and other vegetables together, then making the roux and adding it to the vegetables. The instructions then told me to put half the beans mixture into a glass or ceramic baking dish, add a layer of parmesan cheese, then the remaining vegetables, and a final layer of cheese blended with bread crumbs. I used Panko bread crumbs from the local grocery store that have been sitting on my shelf since last Thanksgiving but are still surprisingly good, and a blend of parmesan and cheddar cheese. The next and final step was to cook the casserole under the broiler for 10 minutes.

I didn't want to overcook the vegetables so I use the low setting on the broiler and turned off the heat before the 10 minutes was up. I peeped into the oven and saw the most beautiful sight: a colorful array of red, green, and yellow vegetables intermixed with the cheese and bread crumbs which the broiler had lightly toasted. We also were having a homemade chicken noodle soup, and while waiting for the water to boil to cook the pasta noodles, we began spooning out samples of the casserole.

It was delicious.

Far from being the limp soggy mess of creamy condensed soup, wilted beans, and faked crunchiness that I remembered from my era of casseroles past, it was fresh- colorful, and sharply flavorful. I'm grateful not only that it tasted so good but that there's just enough leftover to make a lunch out of tomorrow.