I'm In A Casserole State of Mind

It must be the late spring we're having in the Midwest. It's the middle of May, and we've only seen a few days above 70; personally, I've only had one day where I didn't have to wear an extra shirt or sweater to take the chill away. With the lingering chill, I've been in the mood for comfort food.

Browsing through Cook and Tell, the best candidate seemed to be the Scalloped Salmon. I picked up the ingredients with the rest of the groceries, came home, unpacked, and put them away. Not too long later, I looked at my recipes for the week and examined the ingredients closer.

And I should have stopped when one recipe failed that day. You remember what I said about my delightful time with liquid sherbet? One can of canned red salmon was about to go down a similar road.

I've had experience with canned salmon before, and I didn't like it because frankly, the bones remaining in the fish freak me out. Like a banana in recognizeable banana form, or like that stringy stuff on oranges or green beans. Those things don't freak you out? I go out of my way to avoid them.

I pitched the whole can after realizing the extent of the boneage. I definitely felt guilty on a starving-children-of-Africa (or Michigan) and there-goes-money-down-the-drain way, but couldn't bear to think about picking the minute bones out of the canned salmon. And eating the bones as I've heard others do? Ewwwwwwwww.

The next day I went to the store and picked up about a pound of salmon. I brought it home, cooked it up in the pan just like I learned from Tupelo Honey Cafe. It was sublime.

I ate it with some leftover Corn and Blueberry Salad, also from Cook & Tell. Do check out the recipe (and others) from the nicely portioned preview at Google Books. It's beautiful, tasty, and really easy to make. I added a few Craisins.

I mixed leftover, cooked and boneless salmon, celery, cheddar cheese, onion, and prepared stuffing mix together.

Then I added beaten eggs, milk, Dijon mustard, and chicken stock, and poured it over the solids. I stirred to combine and poured the whole thing into a prepared 2 quart pan. The recipe recommends a 9" pie pan, which I don't have, so a 2 quart pan worked really well for me.

The whole thing went into the oven for 45 minutes. While I waited, I prepared the Curried Cole Slaw with Peanuts and Bacon (also available in the Google Books preview) and the Tupelo Honey Glazed Carrots from a few weeks ago. The casserole came out of the oven and I topped it with some chopped tomato.

 In then end, I enjoyed this casserole but it didn't blow me away. It reminded me of dense Thanksgiving stuffing with salmon. It does not resemble scalloped potatoes in any way whatsoever, so I'm not sure what the whole "scalloped" thing was supposed to be about; perhaps baking this in a pie plate would have made that more apparent. It wasn't particularly cheesy either, despite having 2 cups of shredded cheddar. We had a warm surge shortly after I cooked this, so I didn't finish it completely. But if it was winter? And maybe not so bready? Yeah, that would work nicely. With leftover salmon, not canned salmon - of course.