Casserole Crazy

My book, my book!

In case you don’t live in Baltimore or aren’t actively stalking me and didn’t listen to my first ever (book-related) radio interview online this morning, you can hear me on Baltimore’s 93.1 WPOC.

Over at Laurie DeYoung’s show, they’ve even set up a friendly little casserole competition.

While this was the first radio interview I’ve done for the book, I’ve gotten lots of great press so far, which can all be found on the press page of this here website.

Hopefully there’s more to come. Because I’m going to cry like a baby when I get my first bad review.

Saturday, my friend Lacey and I entered The Brooklyn Kitchen‘s Anything But Apple Pie cooking competition, the goal being to cook with apples, making anything but apple pie, natch. The event, which was a great way to ring in the fall, was a benefit for the Greenpoint Dutch Reform Church’s Wednesday Soup kitchen (which I’ve cooked for in the past).

At first, we had the idea to deep fry apple slices and bake them with fontina and gruyere, making an apple parm kind-of dish, but considering neither of us has extra money to toss around, we opted instead to use what I already had on hand which happened to be egg noodles, shallots from the green market and about five ounces of goat cheese. I also had eggs and five medium green apples, making a noodle kugel the obvious choice. Other than picking up some extra goat cheese (more on that later) and Lacey having to run out at the last minute to get vegetable broth—she’s a vegetarian and all I had was chicken broth—we used only ingredients that were already in my kitchen.

The dish was wonderful; we couldn’t help picking at it before we left the house. I even garnished it with some green apple skin. I was sure we’d win. But when we got there, we quickly realized the competition—even though we only had three competitors—was fierce. One entrant had made apple turnovers (close to a pie, yes, but absolutely delicious) one had made a turkey meatball and apple soup and another made pulled pork, Memphis style (with slaw on top) with apple slaw. Anyone who knows me outside of this blog knows that pulled pork, Memphis style, on a sesame bun is my favorite thing in the entire world to eat. You also know that I believe the apple is the most perfect fruit in the world.

Well, the judges didn’t agree with me, on either count. Their top two favorites were the turnovers and the soup—both wonderful, I’ll admit. They loved our kugel, and said it was everything a kugel should be, but that the goat cheese overpowered the apple. But hell, we’d gone out to get more goat cheese, because as far as Lacey and I are concerned, there’s no such thing as too much cheese—especially goat cheese.

If you agree, try our Apple and Goat Cheese Kugel, after the jump.

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emily farris does tv dinner better

For those of you who live in New York, I’ll be on Fox5′s “Good Day New York” at 8:39 a.m. on Wednesday, September 10 (yes, that’s this coming Wednesday), to show the world how to fix up a microwavable TV dinner. Catch me if you can at 8:39 a.m.

[Good Day New York]

Image

It’s true: my cookbook, Casserole Crazy: Hot Stuff For Your Oven! is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com. But do you know what’s even better? You can probably also pre-order it from your local, independent bookstore, and I know you can pre-order it from my local, independent bookstore (no matter where you are, they ship!), which I highly encourage you to do.

Or, you can do what (hopefully) millions of Americans will do, and buy it when it’s released on October 7.

However you do it, buy my book! Pretty please? With a layer of crusty cheese on top?

That’s right casserole competitors of past and future, the Fourth Annual Casserole Party will descend on Brooklyn Label Tuesday Monday, November 10. Get your appetites and your recipes ready. Like last year, all recipes this year must be original. Details to follow soon.

Thanks to Brian Fairbanks for the production and editing, to Holly Harper for the amazing apron and my stepmom, Pat, for the beautiful casserole dish. Oh, and to the Brooklyn Kitchen for the handy, dandy oven puller thingymajig.

Today I made casserole for my local soup kitchen. I’ve been saying I was going to do it for months, and shamefully, have just gotten around to participating. I made my deconstructed zucchini lasagna (a dish that would pretty much be a lasagna if I’d used lasagna noodles and layered it instead of mixing it). I doubled my original recipe (after the jump) and filled two 9 X 13 baking dishes. Even doubling the recipe, the grocery bill came in at just around $20, so in addition to this meal being delicious and hearty, it’s a great way to feed at least 12 people on the cheap.

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Oh wait, I did. Someone just beat me to actually making it.

I was recently bragging to my friends that if I ever had some crazy partnership with Pyrex, the first thing I would design would be a labyrinth-like dish so that every piece of casserole would be a crusty edge piece — because everyone knows that the crusty edge pieces are the best part of any casserole.

Then I went to the website for my favorite, local (favorite and local, not just favorite of the locals) kitchen store, The Brooklyn Kitchen, and what do they have featured on their front page? The Baker’s Edge. Supposedly it’s for brownies, and casseroles are better in glass dishes (or so I’d like to think), so maybe there’s still hope for The Crusty Casserole.

So, Pyrex, if you’re looking for the next big thing, call me.

[The Brooklyn Kitchen: The Baker's Edge]

Yesterday I attended the UnFancy Food Show at the East River Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. While I was there to help my friend Scott sell his books and hand out postcards for my upcoming cookbook, I had the good fortune of being positioned between the McClure Brothers, who make their own pickles, and the Mast Brothers, who make their own chocolate. Their samples were both abundant. And you’d think eating chocolate and pickles all day would have kept me from eating my weight in pork on a stick (is it a problem when one measures in skewers? “I had six skewers of pork!”), but it did not. I now have my own little pork belly. And I love it.

[The UnFancy Food Show]

Image via UltraClay’s flickr.

That way, when the book comes out, I’ll be all Facebook-famous, or something. Then I’ll also get around to replacing this mug of me with the cover art. Promise. At least on the Facebook page.

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