Rhonda’s Rice and Broccoli Casserole

This is a recipe from Kansas, a statement which you might want to interpret as a gourmet alert. The ingredients include Velveeta. But though I hate to admit it, in spite of that this recipe makes a delicious side dish.

Rhonda, the wife of one of Jerri’s cousins, contributed the recipe to a cookbook compiled by the Farm Bureau Women of Butler County, Kansas. As I have mentioned elsewhere, my mother-in-law gave us the cookbook for Christmas many years ago, and Jerri has made many of the recipes. Some have become favorites, like and this one from Rhonda is going to be added to the list.

When I warmed up the leftover casserole to go with the hot dogs and pasta salad we set out to feed my brother-in-law and his work crew at the cabin, he remarked how well the broccoli went with the rice as he took a second helping. It is indeed a tasty combination.

When I confessed that the sauce was made with canned soups and Velveeta, he guffawed and asked me if I finally was abandoning my purist policies.

One of his grandsons and a member of the work crew looked puzzled. “What’s Velveeta?” he asked.

“It’s like American cheese, like the single slices you get on cheeseburgers,” I said, “but it comes in a box.” I got the box out to show him.

“It’s a brand name,” my brother-in-law explained to him.

“OK,” said he, and took a serving.

I can remember the box of Velveeta in the refrigerator at home. Like Rhonda, Mom used it in cooking because it made really smooth sauces. Velveeta was invented in 1923 in Monroe, New York, and was named for its velvety smooth texture. It is a dairy product, so even Wisconsinites can admit to using it without shame. It is not, however, to be confused with a good Wisconsin brick, Cheddar or Colby.

When Jerri and I were first married, most Kansas supermarkets offered Velveeta, ground Parmesan, and a handful of other cheeses, nearly all from Kraft. Last summer, when we stopped at Emporia, Kansas, to stock up on the best flour I know (Hudson Cream), I made a point of inspecting the cheese case.

There were probably a hundred different varieties and brands of cheese made by cheese makers from Oregon to Vermont as well as Wisconsin, an enormous improvement in the last four decades. I almost felt like I had wandered into a good Wisconsin supermarket.

Velveeta was still in the cheese case, but my attitude towards it had changed. Even the ancient Romans used some processed foods including fish sauces and cheeses flavored with garlic or sweetened with honey as well as salted cheeses shipped to Rome from across the empire, perhaps to be eaten with the hams imported from Belgium. We have chemists today to make fancier processed foods, but maybe that’s just progress.

Even without scientists, our ancestors were pretty clever when it came to inventing new foods. For instance, yogurt, tofu and most of the cheeses we enjoy today have been around for thousands of years. What I finally have come to understand is that Velveeta is really just another in the long list of foods that start with milk. Not my favorite to eat on crackers, but a good ingredient in some recipes.

Like Rhonda’s Rice and Broccoli Casserole which makes six to eight servings of a delicious side dish.

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 cup white rice
1 1/2 cups water
Scant 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 lbs. broccoli crowns
4 T butter
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/3 cup chopped onion
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
1/2 lb. Velveeta cheese

PROCEDURE:

Rinse the rice, then put it in a saucepan with the water and salt. Bring to a boil, then stir and reduce the heat to a low simmer. Cook the rice covered for fifteen to twenty minutes until the water is absorbed. Remove the pan from the heat.

Prepare the vegetables while the rice is cooking. Wash the broccoli, discard the tough bottom part of the stems and divide the crowns into bite-sized pieces. Clean and chop the celery and onion into a quarter to half-inch dice.

Preheat the oven to 350º.

Blanch the broccoli in a microwave oven or covered saucepan with a little water for four or five minutes until it is crisp but tender. Drain and set aside the broccoli. Cut the Velveeta into half inch cubes.

Melt the butter in a two quart saucepan over low heat. Add the celery and onion and cook them for about four minutes until they are soft. Add the undiluted soups and Velveeta and stir until you have a smooth sauce. Remove the sauce from the heat.

Spread the cooked rice evenly over the bottom of a two quart baking dish. Spread the broccoli on the rice and spoon the sauce over the broccoli. Put the dish on a center shelf in the oven and bake the casserole for about thirty minutes until the rice is bubbling around the edges and the sauce is just beginning to brown.

NOTES: Rhonda’s recipe calls for two ten ounce packages of frozen broccoli spears and butter or margarine. I prefer butter and fresh broccoli when you can get it.

Shrimp Étouffée

I was introduced to Creole cooking on my first visit to New Orleans many years ago.  I ate barbecue shrimp, jambalaya, gumbo and shrimp étouffée.  The only dish with which I was vaguely familiar was jambalaya, and that was because of the Hank Williams hit song, “On the Bayou.”  The food was so good that I bought a cookbook of Creole cuisine, La Bouche Creole,  by Leon E. Soniat, Jr. 

The title literally means “The Creole Mouth.”  It’s a fun book to read filled with Soniat’s accounts of how Mamere (his grandmother) and Mamete (his mother) prepared many of the recipes.  La Bouche Creole has been in print for over thirty years. You should get a copy if you want to enjoy authentic Creole cuisine.  Meanwhile, here is a modified version of one of my favorite recipes from Soniat’s collection, shrimp étouffée.

Étouffée means “smothered” so shrimp étouffée is shrimp smothered in a thick sauce.  It resembles shrimp creole like my mother used to make, but shrimp étouffée has a more complex flavor that I think you will find both intriguing and delicious. The secret is the beef broth and brown roux.  It takes longer to make shrimp étouffée than shrimp creole, but that roux creates a rich sauce that is heavenly.

Soniat calls for three pounds of shrimp, and that is what I used the first time I made the dish.   Shrimp are expensive, however, and I now use about two pounds, half medium and half large.

INGREDIENTS:

3 T butter

3 T vegetable oil

6 T all-purpose flour

2 cups chopped onions

1 cup chopped green bell pepper

1 cup chopped celery

4 or 5 cloves garlic

1 6 oz can tomato paste

3 cups beef broth

2 cups water

3 bay leaves

1 tsp. dried basil

1/2 tsp. dried thyme

1 tsp. chili powder

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

1 tsp. salt

2- 3 lbs. peeled shrimp

1 cup chopped shallots

2 T chopped parsley

PROCEDURE:

First make a roux.  Heat three tablespoons each of butter and vegetable oil over low heat in a large pot or Dutch oven.  Add six tablespoons flour and use a wooden spoon to stir it frequently until the flour is medium brown, about the color of milk chocolate.  It will take about twenty minutes to do this right.

Pay close attention to the flour so it does not burn.  Prepare the vegetables while the roux is cooking.  Clean and chop the onion, bell pepper and celery into a quarter to half-inch dice.  Clean and mince the garlic.

When the roux is brown, add the vegetables followed by the tomato paste, beef broth and water.  Raise the heat and bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat.  While the vegetables simmer, add the bay leaves and stir in the basil, thyme, chili powder, cayenne pepper, black pepper and salt.  Clean and chop the shallots into a quarter-inch dice and finely chop the parsley.

Peel and devein the shrimp if necessary, or thaw frozen cooked shrimp and remove the tails.

After the vegetables have simmered about forty-five minutes, add the shallots and parsley.  Simmer for another ten minutes, then add the shrimp and bring the pot back to a simmer.  If you are using raw shrimp, allow the pot to simmer about seven or eight minutes, then turn off the heat.  With precooked shrimp, turn the heat off as soon as the pot begins to simmer.

Cover the pot and let it stand on the back of the stove for an hour or so to blend the flavors.  Reheat just to a simmer before serving.

Serve the étouffée over white rice with a green salad and crusty bread.

NOTES:  Soniat calls for raw shrimp, which you need to peel before cooking.  Not having any raw shrimp in the house one Sunday morning, I tried two packages of frozen cooked shrimp.  I thawed them, removed the tails, and added them to the pot as the final ingredient.  The dish was still delicious, so you can get by with cooked shrimp.

One cup of uncooked rice will produce about three cups of cooked rice, so if you start with one and one-half cups of uncooked rice, you will end up with six to eight servings to smother with shrimp étouffée.