Pretty much anything called a casserole these days gets me thinking I'm stuck in the 1970s, and this recipe is no exception. In fact this whole book is a little bit like that. My husband calls it "comfort food." But I call it "what my Mom made," which while not necessarily a bad thing can seem a bit dated, seeing as I'm no spring chicken myself.
The recipe says to use cauliflower and broccoli, but I only had romanesco, which is a little bit of both. A chartreuse space-alien looking sort of brassica, it suits this dish just fine.
This dish puts an Indian spin on orange-beef, which I would usually consider Chinese. But adding Madras curry powder makes it something altogether different, a one-dish meal with the homey warmth of curry and a sour-sweet kick.
This is the same salmon we make, year after year, from my friend Jenny. We build a boat out of tinfoil around the fillet of salmon, put it on the grill, and glaze it with a soy sauce-brown sugar-olive oil-mustard-butter-ginger concoction. Couscous is our standard starch. This time I served steamed broccoli for the kids and made Eatwell Farm's Broccoli Salad with Asian Dressing for the grown-ups.
We're eating from Canal House Cooking all week long! The photo for this dinner, p. 79, is beautiful. I'm not sure I'll be able to find a similar sausage coil, but I'll swing by Fatted Calf and see what they have. I love Fatted Calf because they sell only pasture raised meats. They can be expensive, so we eat mostly vegetables, grains, beans and dairy with small servings of meat.
This is another old favorite from Deborah Madison that my husband and I have been making for years. We've tried many variations of the sauce, and often I'll make it without marinating the tofu ahead of time, simply because I don't get around to mixing it up before I need to cook dinner. Even then it is delicious. Often it serves as an end of the week produce clean up, just about any vegetable can go in, clearing out the fridge for our incoming Eatwell box. I've made it with pretty much every sort of green we've had - stir fry mix, spinach, chard, kale, mustard (one of my favorites, with a simplified marinade). It is good with turnips, broccoli, cauliflower, always snap peas if we have them and sometimes carrots, though I can usually find a better use for those.