one-dish meals – Page 8 – Courage in the Kitchen

When we moved north of Hayward, Wisconsin, our home was a quarter mile from the Namekagon River. Until I was fourteen or fifteen, the bald eagles that nested along the river used to cruise by at treetop level looking for a trout dinner while I hunted those crafty fish hip-deep in the water. I loved those great birds with their white heads and yellow eyes.

But by the late 1950’s we almost never saw eagles along “our section” of the river. The nest in the old white pine on the Phipps Flowage was deserted, and reports of other deserted nests on the Chippewa Flowage and other area lakes were in the newspapers. There were still eagles in Wisconsin, but just not as many. It was illegal to kill eagles in the United States, but we assumed that violators were still shooting or poisoning them or that more were being killed by cars as the birds scavenged roadkill.

But then Silent Spring appeared in 1962. Within a few months, millions of Americans became aware of the dangers of the indiscriminate use of DDT and other insecticides and herbicides being sprayed on lawns, fields and forests. Scientists had known for several years that birds were especially vulnerable to such poisons. Eagles and ospreys were particularly threatened by DDT, which was concentrated in the food chain and interfered with their reproduction.

The evidence was buried in scientific papers, but Rachel Carson uncovered it and explained it to non-scientists. Millions of people like me began to wonder if it was a good idea to fog drive-in theaters, use a Flit Gun in the house or spray the forests and fields around us. She was attacked by the chemical companies who produced the pesticides and is still accused of writing “junk science” by people who simply refuse to trust scientific evidence.

The delaying tactics worked for eight years after Silent Spring was published, but in 1970, President Richard Nixon signed the bill creating the Environmental Protection Agency. In 1972 the use of DDT was banned in the United States. Since then eagle populations have steadily increased. It is illegal to kill eagles, but they were removed from the threatened and endangered list in 2007.

Legal or not, our neighbor Mrs. Hagberg would have killed an eagle one time. The Hagbergs lived along the river where I fished. When I was twelve years old, they hired me to mow their lawn. One day that summer, while Mrs. Hagberg was sweeping her back porch, an eagle grabbed her little black and white fox terrier. As the eagle tried to lift the dog off the ground, Mrs. Hagberg ran out the door with her broom. Seeing an angry white-haired housewife brandishing a weapon, the bird let go of the dog and escaped to hunt another day.

My mother kept a recipe for a simple casserole titled “Mrs. Hagberg’s Potato and Hamburger Hot Dish.” It tastes a lot like a boy scout hobo dinner without the carrots. When I told my sister Patsy about it, she guessed that it was a recipe from the Depression, a way to feed a family some meat and starch without spending much money. She might well be right, as most people who lived out of town then raised their own potatoes and onions and sometimes even cured and smoked their own bacon. And when bossy the cow got old….

If you like a rather bland dish (as some of my Scandinavian friends do), you should give this a try. Just make sure that the ketchup bottle is on the table.

INGREDIENTS:

1 large onion (3 inches in diameter)
2 lbs. potatoes
1 lb. lean hamburger
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/2- 3/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
4 – 5 slices bacon
1 cup cold water

PROCEDURE:

Peel and slice the potatoes fairly thin. Peel and chop the onion medium. Preheat the oven to 375º and grease a three quart casserole.

Layer of a third of the potatoes and onions in the casserole and dot half of the hamburger by tablespoonfuls on top. Sprinkle a half teaspoon of salt over the layer and season with a generous grind of pepper. Repeat to make a second layer. Finish with the rest of the potatoes and onions, salt and pepper. Add the water. Cut the bacon into half inch pieces and layer them on top.

Bake covered about forty minutes. Remove the cover and bake another twenty minutes until the casserole is done. Serve with ketchup, a green vegetable, bread and salad.

This recipe makes eight very generous servings, but the leftovers taste just fine.

NOTES: The instructions for making this casserole are “sliced spuds, little gobs of hamburger about the size of quarter, quite a little salt and pepper, strip with bacon.” My guess is that Mom wrote down the recipe as Mrs. Hagberg told it to her. A lady who shared a recipe with me a few days ago said, “If you have been cooking for awhile, you know what I mean.” I try to provide a little more guidance, but I do know what she means.

Rachel Carson died of cancer on April 14, 1964, less than two years after the publication of Silent Spring. Thanks in part to her book, eagles once again fly over the Namekagon River and even hunt the Widespread at New Richmond. If you have not yet seen an eagle gliding twenty feet above the water in front of you, find a place to sit along a river. There’s a wonderful experience waiting for you.

Last Christmas our son gave me On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson by William Souder, who lives in Grant, Minnesota. I just finished the book and highly recommend it. Now I am going to reread Silent Spring, this time in a hardcover I found at a Salvation Army store in Brainerd, Minnesota, just a few weeks ago.

Among the many reasons for admiring Julia Child are her sensible observations about the privacy of the kitchen. From her I learned that the broken cake or tart that refused to slip smoothly out of the pan will look fine and taste great once it is frosted or covered with plenty of whipped cream.

When half of something she was flipping in the skillet ended up on the range top, she simply used a spatula to scrape things back into the pan and observed, “Who’s to know?” It was Julia who taught me that things like crepes have both a public and private side.

Most of all I learned that the cook’s job is to make food that looks inviting and tastes good, not to explain exactly what goes into it. For instance, if the chef told you that the eggplant Parmesan on your plate was made with raw cow’s milk you might think twice about eating it, even though he was assuring you that he used genuine Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese in the recipe.

Perhaps this explains why there are so many secret recipes: We all have prejudices about food that can interfere with our enjoying some wonderful dishes. Take rutabagas as an example.

It is hard for me to understand how people can reach adulthood without learning to love rutabagas. That’s probably because I grew up in northern Wisconsin, prime country for raising rutabagas. Cumberland, Wisconsin, just an hour’s drive north of New Richmond, celebrates the harvest of this vegetable with a Rutabaga Festival each August. You might want to mark your calendar for the weekend of August 21st this year.

My guess is that someone who grew up in Alabama might wonder why I don’t swoon over boiled peanuts. Or why I don’t dream of rattlesnake steaks broiled over Texas mesquite when I am longing for some comfort food like Mom used to make.

My mother hated all snakes and killed them when she could. She had read the Bible and knew that snakes were her enemy. That probably explains why I don’t miss rattlesnake on a menu. The fact that rattlesnakes are not found very far north in Wisconsin might also be a factor, though I remember her shooting a large pine snake that could have fed the family for a day or two.

On the other hand, rutabagas grow like weeds up here. When my father was a boy, my grandfather planted a couple of acres of rutabagas every year. Grandma Rang cooked them for the family and Grandpa chopped them up and fed them to the cows in winter. Dad said the cows really liked them.

My mother put rutabagas in soups, mashed them with potatoes and boiled them like carrots. I don’t remember rutabaga pie, but it’s possible that she simply didn’t tell us what was in that slice on our plates.

Which brings me back to Smoked Sausage Soup and Julia Child’s admonition, “Who’s to know?” because the secret ingredient in this soup is a rutabaga.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 lb. smoked sausage
1 small rutabaga
2 medium carrots
2 medium potatoes
1/2 small onion
4 beef bouillon cubes
4 1/4 cups cold water, divided
2 tsp. cornstarch
1/8 tsp. brown gravy sauce (optional)
Parsley (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste

PROCEDURE:

Peel the rutabaga and potatoes and cut them into about a three-quarter inch dice. Clean and chop the carrots into half-inch pieces. Peel and coarsely chop the onion. You should have about one and one-half cups each of rutabaga and potato and one-half to three-quarter cup each of chopped carrot and onion.

Put the vegetables into a three quart saucepan along with a quart of cold water, four beef bouillon cubes and a dash of freshly ground black pepper. Bring the soup to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer partially covered for about twenty minutes. Cut the sausage crosswise into half inch slices and add them to the soup. While the soup is coming back to a simmer, dissolve the cornstarch in a quarter cup of cold water. Add the cornstarch to the soup and cook for three or four minutes.

If the broth looks too pale, add a few drops of brown gravy sauce at this time.

Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve the soup by itself or with a salad and sandwiches. If you wish, garnish each serving with some chopped parsley.

NOTES: This recipe makes five generous servings, but you can easily increase the recipe. One simple way is to use the whole ring of sausage, an extra cup of water and one more bouillon cube to make eight servings.

When I use thin-skinned potatoes to make this soup, I just scrub them well. If you have someone in your family who you think might object to eating rutabaga, peel the potatoes. That way, if someone asks, “What is this?” you can say, “Maybe a piece of potato?”

Who’s to know?