As I’ve said before, I’ve spent much of the past few months trying to make myself a better cook. I’m no Julia Child, but if you give me a recipe, I can pretty much hold my own, and after months of practice it might not take all night to do it. But my time in the kitchen has also spurred some insights into cooking. For example, there are more cuisines beyond Italian and Mexican. This is hyperbole, of course; I’ve eaten enough Mediterranean and Indian and Ethiopian and what have you. But I never really considered being able to actually cook them. Like so many of us, I’ve dabbled in stir-fry, but beyond that, my palate had been pretty limited.
My main insight was realizing that my mom was a damn good cook. Like many of us, I always enjoyed my mom’s cooking growing up, with a special fondness for her garlic-forward spaghetti sauce and her simple yet tasty meatloaf. But what I’ve come to understand is just how much her skill was masked by her ease in the kitchen. It’s her knowledge of what tastes go together, how to properly prepare ingredients, and how to tell when something is done. It’s sounds simple, but those three aspects of cooking are perhaps the most difficult to master—really, they’re the heart of good cooking, and she never made a show of it.
What I really learned from my mom’s cooking is to assert what you like without apology. That meatloaf is a perfect example. She didn’t care for the bits of carrots and onions and other filler that made their way into other meatloaf, so instead she added only eggs and breadcrumbs (in addition to spices), and let the ground beef speak for itself. It’s not haute cuisine, to be sure, but it was the taste and texture she wanted, and so it became what I was after as well.
This past week, I made a dish from my wife’s family, called Chicken Enchilada Casserole. I’ve made it several times in the past, and I enjoy it immensely. It’s one of those dishes that ends tasting better reheated. But it got me to thinking about the curiosities Midwestern cooking. I’ve eaten enough potluck dinners and homecooked meals to know that Midwestern cuisine is its own curious beast, full of casseroles and bakes and pies both savory and sweet. There is something both comforting and alarming about Midwestern cooking, a kind of homey charm gilded with the ever-present threat of sudden heart death.
To that end, I started to formulate some universal truths about Midwestern cooking. Here are the first five. I know there are many more out there, so if you think of any, let me know, so they can be addressed in future posts.
1) Cheese can be measured by weight, volume, and area.
There is hardly a Midwestern dish that doesn’t call for at least some cheese. Usually it’s a central feature of the dish, some critical binding agent for both ingredients and bowels. Other times, it seems like recipes throw in some jack or swiss for no other reason than to make Midwestern weight. My mom won’t touch apple pie unless it’s got a piece of sharp cheddar on top.
Most recipes in our recipe box measure cheese in either ounces or cups. But sometimes that measurement is omitted entirely, leaving you only the size of the casserole dish. Take the aforementioned Chicken Enchilada Casserole. The recipe calls for sixteen ounces of shredded cheddar, but leaves the distribution to the cook. Please allow me to indulge in some logic. The recipe calls for four layers of ingredients, then repeats the layers, meaning there will be two layers of cheese. I also know that one pound of grated cheddar comes in two 8 oz. bags. Thus, I know I will use one 8 oz. bag for one layer. In other words, that 8 oz. of cheese can also be measured as 9” x 13” worth of cheese.
From now on, I intend to quantify cheese by area as often as possible.
2) Cream of mushroom soup is Ohio tofu.
Growing up, we always had at least four cans of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup in our pantry. Yet never once did we ever sit down to a nice bowl of Cream of Mushroom soup. But that was never its purpose. Perhaps people once ate bowls of Cream of Mushroom soup, much in the same way ancient peoples ate bread made from acorn flour or meat suspended in gelatin. But today? I doubt you’ll find many people clamoring for a piping hot cup of gummy bits in white sauce. *
* – I realize this also could refer to New England Clam Chowder, which many people do actually clamor for. It could also refer to a poorly made beef stroganoff. Or underbaked tuna casserole. Interpret this how you will.
Those of us in the Midwest, we knew Cream of Mushroom was never meant to be consumed on its own. No, Cream of Mushroom soup was an ingredient, only ever intended to be added to a dish to create a magic combination of flavor and heart disease. Indeed, Cream of Mushroom soup has no flavor of its own; instead, it takes on the flavor of whatever it’s cooked in. Green bean casserole? It tastes like onions. Tuna Casserole? Tuna. Chicken Enchilada Casserole? It’s not enchiladas, but it’s still something more. Chicken? Green chiles? Who knows. It doesn’t matter, because the ingredient has transubstantiated into casserole, and we the supplicants kneel before you, even as we struggle with our curiously tighter pants.
3) Cultural appropriation can be delicious.
As a nation, we’ve never been shy about cultural appropriation, and as far as food goes, this is understandable. After all, we don’t really have our own “American” cuisine—at least, not in the same way as the French or the Szechuan or any other number of cultures. Even those cuisines incorporate a great deal of outside technique and ingredients, meaning there’s no such thing as “pure” cuisine. That being said, some of the things we do to other cultures’ food is…well, it’s delicious. Objectionable from an aesthetic standpoint, perhaps, but delicious all the same.
Allow me two examples from our recipe box. Again, I return to the Chicken Enchilada Casserole (I swear, I cook more than that). The “enchilada” part of the title is a bit misleading. Honestly, the only nods to Tex-Mex flavors are the can of chopped green chiles and the tortilla chips that serve as the base layer of the casserole. It certainly works in terms of flavor, but the recipe gets more Tex-Mex flavor from its name than from its ingredients.
The other recipe is Taco Pie, which I adore. The filling is made from ground beef mixed with a taco seasoning packet (I prefer Old El Paso, for those keeping score), green peppers, tomato paste, and, of course, cheese—both cheddar and parmesan.* The crust? Pillsbury Fucking Crescent Rolls. You just tear the little triangles apart, press them into the pie plate, and you bake that thing. Pour in that meaty/cheesy filling, top it with cheese and olives, and you got yourself a pie going. Tex-Mex authentic? Hell no. Insanely delicious? Hell yeah. Bad for your ticker? You better believe it!
* – A sub-truth in this category is related to the term “parmesan.” When you read “parmesan” in relation to Midwestern cooking, assume the writer means Kraft parmesan, or what we call “sprinkle cheese.” I have been told it’s 100% cheese, but somewhere in the process it became something entirely its own.
4) Jello as a medium.
As far as dessert goes, Jello is…alright, I guess. It’s kind of fruity, it’s refreshing on a hot day, and it has less fat than pudding, which sounds about right since pudding is so clearly superior. But Jello has its uses, and Midwesterners know this from birth. *
* – For clarity’s sake, I am talking about sweetened gelatin, and not the abomination known as aspic, in which meat and other savory elements are suspended in a similarly savory gelatin. There are sins in our past that we must acknowledge and learn from, and aspic should be considered among the highest.
Jello…what can I say? You’ve got your basic Jello sheet, cut into squares, or perhaps Jigglers if ya nasty. You’ve got your basic Jello salads, usually with bits of fruit cut up and suspended in the Jello mold (although I have seen carrots included in Jello salad, the textural disconnect is unpleasant and should be avoided). Often the Jello is color-coordinated with the fruit, avoiding the gauche misstep of a green grape emerging from an orange Jello Bundt.
For those who remember college, there were the ever-present Jello shots. My favorite Jello shots were the ones we made for the Ohio State-Michigan game in 2007. Our colors didn’t come out quite \right, so instead of a deep purplish-gray and a bright scarlet, we ended up with a watery lilac and a dark maroon, which we dubbed Michigan Tears and Wolverine Blood, respectively.
Perhaps the defining Midwestern use of Jello, though, is the Layered Jello Salad. This dish, a staple at the Lutheran potlucks of my youth, had at least seven thin rainbow-colored layers of Jello, with each layer separated by a layer of pearlescent white gelatin. It always looked appealing, and like so many potluck dishes, left one bitterly disappointed.
5) Anything can be a salad if you just believe.
You have to admire the chutzpah it takes to call that Rainbow Jello dish a salad. But call it that they did, and they would die on that hill. But I can’t say I begrudge them. I mean, what is a salad? I’m inclined to say they include at least some kind of vegetable. But other Midwesterners would call this a lack of imagination, an unwillingness to engage in the pioneering spirit that characterized our historical brethren.
For Midwesterners, the term salad is wide and encompassing. Side salads are salads, sure. But so is egg salad, tuna salad, and potato salad. Oh, potato salad. Do you like the Amish style, with eggs and mustard? Or are you more a German dill-and-red-potatoes person? Pasta salad is big, too, usually rotini tossed in Italian dressing, with olives and tomatoes, maybe artichoke, and if you’re really good, cut up pepperoni slices.
But there are a whole other slew of salads that make up the Midwestern palate. Some of them were imported, like the Waldorf Salad, which was first served in New York’s Waldorf- Astoria hotel in 1896. While it originated in the Big Apple, the mix of celery, apples, walnuts and grapes slathered in mayonnaise became something of a staple in the Midwest, long after the New York cache disappeared. Ambrosia Salad is similar, mixing mandarin oranges, maraschino cherries, and pineapple chunks with mini marshmallows and heavy whipped cream. A particularly idiosyncratic salad involves putting canned pear halves cut-side up on a piece of Iceberg lettuce, filling the pit with a spoonful of mayonnaise, and sprinkling shredded cheddar over the top.
Perhaps most fitting is one my wife is frankly astonished I haven’t had yet, called Pea Salad. Unlike some of the other salads in this list, it actually does have vegetables, namely peas (duh). But it also has dill pickles and mayonnaise, both classic Midwest ingredients. The two seem to work together well in tuna salad, do I don’t see why pea salad should be any different. But there’s one more ingredient, one final touch to make this dish complete, the one element that really sets the seal on this Midwestern salad.
That ingredient?
Velveeta.
MetaFrizzics 