Comfort food is a term that's been bandied about quite a lot in recent years and it usually turns out to mean mashed potatoes or rice pudding, sometimes meat loaf. I think what "comfort food" really meant was the kind of dish you wouldn't be caught dead serving to guests.
For decades FF potatoes and a salad were the standard restaurant offerings with almost every entree as home cooking slowly slipped out the back door. Another much derided category of food is the "casserole" your mother used to make, or, rather, concoct, out of two cans of soup and something or other. The same dreary prepackaged ingredients went into these no-muss, no-fuss, no-bother meals and they matched the cookie-cutter tract houses and overall blandness for which the '50s in America are so well remembered.
But it wasn't the fault of these maligned oven-proof casseroles that could be made way ahead and held indefinitely in ovens that accounted for their reputations. It was the home economists in those giant test kitchens of soup manufacturers busily pushing the canned or dried products of their employers that were responsible for those mish-mashes. It ain't the pot, it’s what you put into it.
Perfectly wonderful one-pot dishes were an important part of French cookery and continue to be so. What are cassoulet, choucroute garni, and pot au feu but one-pot meals? (And do we not owe a debt of eternal gratitude to Julia Child for hauling them into America's consciousness in the '60s on her great teaching show "The French Chef"?)
Italian lasagne and Greek pastitsio are long-revered ethnic dishes and Japanese food is a lot more than raw fish. Under the general heading of Nabemono there are a number of communally cooked and eaten one-pot meals such as shabu shabu, suki yaki, and yosenabe, a winter casserole of vegetables, seafood, and chicken, that are regarded as festive meals. Though not generally "casseroles," it seems to me that all Chinese meals are communally shared. There is a Mongolian Hot Pot with its tall chimney for coals kicking around in back of one of my kitchen cupboards, but it is rather a production so that's why it's neglected.
But to get back to casseroles, which come in so many shapes and sizes and ethnic backgrounds, with the right ingredients they are splendid for entertaining variable numbers of people and also have the virtue of staying reasonably hot on buffet tables. So go ahead, serve a midcentury dinner (everything from the '50s from Danish furniture to Fiestaware dishes that can be sold on eBay is termed "mid-century" or "retro")
Might be a good time to dig up your mom's old Salton hot tray and those wedding present candle-warmers you never used, too.
Chicken and Cremini Casserole
Perfect for a Sunday night supper as well as a Saturday night buffet. Nothing startling here but a crowd-pleaser and cross-generational favorite. You will need a shallow oven-proof baking dish of about 4-quart capacity that looks pretty on the table. Serves eight.
2 whole chicken breasts with skin and bone
1 large chicken bouillon cube
2 or 3 scallions, trimmed
1 bay leaf
3 to 4 sprigs fresh thyme
Salt and white pepper
10 oz. fresh cremini (or other) mushrooms
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp. butter
Salt and pepper
2 Tbsp. flour
Reserved broth from above
1 cup half-and-half
1/8 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
6 to 8 cups cooked wide egg noodles
1/2 cup chopped parsley
Grating of Gruyere cheese (about 1/4 cup)
Put the chicken breasts (you can use the skinned and boned fillets but they don’t have much flavor) in cold water to cover and add the bouillon cube, scallions, bay leaf, and thyme. Bring to the simmer and skim off any froth that rises. Add salt and pepper. Cover and barely bubble the water for about 20 minutes, or until just done. While still warm, skin and bone the chicken and tear it into large chunks. Reduce the broth to about 2 cups, strain, and reserve.
Sauté the sliced mushrooms and garlic in the butter, adding salt and pepper to taste. Keep them moving over a very high flame and do not overcook or the mushrooms will release all their juices. Five minutes is long enough. Sprinkle them with flour. Stir until well blended, then stir in the two cups of broth over medium low heat. Add the half-and-half and nutmeg. Combine the chicken, mushrooms with their sauce, and the parsley and noodles. Turn this into a well-buttered gratin dish and sprinkle with the Gruyere or any mild cheese of your choice.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and bake the casserole, loosely tented with foil, for about 20 minutes, until hot and bubbly but not dried out. It will not be brown as that would indeed dry out the dish. For a bit more color, sprinkle the top heavily with more chopped parsley.
For a bright green vegetable not quite so retro, serve lightly cooked broccoli florets at room temperature dressed with a good olive oil and lemon juice with lemon zest for decoration.
