No holiday stirs my gastronomic id as much as Thanksgiving, nor my curiosity, either. Probably the most vivid example of this occurred in a suburb of Dallas several years ago. Joe’s middle daughter is a rabid Black Friday shopper (that’s the day after Thanksgiving, for you non-shoppers) and has often persuaded me to go along with her. In this case, we were at one of the big box electronic stores. She and the granddaughter made a beeline for what they were after, and I claimed a place in the already lengthy checkout line.
I hauled out my inevitable knitting and, as it often does, it was the start of a conversation with the woman next to me. Soon enough, things came around to what dinner the previous day had been. The woman, a Southerner but not a Texan, remarked that "of course" she put chopped hard-boiled egg in the dressing. It was obvious that she thought I was a nut case when I began asking her for more detail, and she ceased talking, as you would when a weirdo sits next to you on an airplane.
My mother’s perpetual fret about the meal (aside from the dressing being too dry) was that there were too many starches and not enough green vegetables. Back then, people considered sweet potatoes the same as white ones, rather than understanding they were nutrition-packed, so the bread-based dressing, the sweet potatoes and the mashed potatoes were "just too starchy," and the mashed potatoes disappeared as soon as my grandmother died. The attempt to balance the meal with something green usually left us with a poor can of green beans, was eaten only as a polite gesture.
When I began to cook the Thanksgiving meal myself, the green vegetable quandary followed me. Clearly the day deserved something better. It wasn’t until I was temping at Shriners Hospital that the answer appeared.
"What is this?" I asked someone at lunch in the cafeteria. I’d been served with some sort of a casserole that was green with a sauce, some slices of hard-boiled egg and crunchy bread on top. "I don’t know, but it’s good, isn’t it?" was the reply. Yes, it certainly was. And it turned out to be spinach. Never seen on our home table in any form because my mother loathed it (and who can blame her when all she knew was canned spinach?), it was a shock.
Persistence won me the recipe for the dish, which appeared in smaller quantities on our table the following Thanksgiving and for many thereafter.. It is, in effect, a spinach gratinee, with contemporary substitutions. I haven’t made it in a couple of years, but I may this year. Because my oven, I suspect, will be crammed, I may mix the spinach and the sauce and warm them together on the stove top. I might skip the egg. And I suppose I could use fresh bread crumbs, buttered and seasoned , sprinkled over the top of the casserole dish and run under the broiler, but that really wouldn’t be quite the same at all. The recipe originally called for Kellogg’s Croutettes. I don’t even know if they’re made any more, but I’ve used Pepperidge Farm Stuffing (various flavors) only for this. Somehow, the texture of the stuffing cubes offsets the creaminess of the spinach mixture just perfectly.
And by the way, if you’ve never done it before, this teaches the cook how to make a white sauce, to use the English name, or a bechamel sauce, as the French call it. They would never use low-fat milk, but I always have, just because it’s what’s in the fridge.
Shriners Spinach Casserole
1/4 c. butter
1/3 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 c. milk
1/2 tsp. dry mustard
3/4 c. sharp cheddar cheese, chopped or shredded
16 oz. frozen chopped spinach, cooked and well drained
4 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
Enough stuffing cubes or croutons to cover the dish.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. I usually make this in an 8" x 8" Pyrex glass dish, but use what you have.
In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the flour, stir it in, and Keep stirring. When the mixture begins to bubble, continue to cook, and to stir, for at least 2 minutes. (Time it; this is what keeps the mixture from tasting like paste.)
At this point, you have two options. Some people are comfortable dumping the milk in all at once and whisking the mixture until it’s smooth before returning it to the flame. Other, more paranoid people, like me, learned it a different, safer way.
Turn the burner off. Add a little of the milk. The flour mixture will sort of seize up and not want to absorb it at first. Keep stirring; it will. When the mixture is smooth, add a little more milk and repeat the process. Continue adding the milk, which you’ll be able to do in larger and larger quantities, until it’s all been stirred in. Return the pan to medium heat, and heat it until it’s bubbling and thickened, stirring pretty much constantly. This is a swell place for a wooden spatula, so you can clean the bottom of the pan with each swipe, because that’s where it starts to thicken first. Just be patient. When it’s bubbling and the thickening has finished, drop the heat and add the salt and dry mustard. Then start adding the cheese, stirring it in as it melts. Taste the mixture. It should be rather sharp. Turn off the heat. (You can do this a couple of days ahead and refrigerate it.)
Spread the spinach in the bottom of the casserole. Top it with the sliced eggs. Pour the sauce over the eggs, and then sprinkle on the stuffing cubes.
Bake 15 minutes or until browned. Serves—oh, who knows? Four as part of a regular meal, two spinach lovers or eight at a big Thanksgiving.
-Ann