Weekend Cooking: White Bean Casserole

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, this is the weekend to look for recipes and inspiration.  This isn't a traditional Thanksgiving dish, but it is sometimes good to have a vegetarian option for those who forgo turkey.

This recipe didn't come from a book, it came from my head. But since I invented it for Book Club, that is connection enough for me to post it today as part of Weekend Cooking.

The Book Club ladies all raved and asked me to type up the recipe, so I am going to take them at their word. I think it is yummy.

WHITE BEAN CASSEROLE WITH ARTICHOKES 

NOTE: This serves four as a side dish, or two hungry people for dinner. Multiply accordingly. 

one 14oz can artichoke hearts, chopped in 1/2" or so pieces
one 14oz can little white beans, drained and rinsed
one 14oc can diced tomatoes, with juice
two whole eggs, beaten with a fork
1/2 cup ricotta, or 1/2 cup grated soft white cheese
1 Tbsp. or so dried Italian herbs (parsley, oregano, basil)
1 big garlic clove, crushed
salt & pepper to taste*
8oz or so sliced mozzarella, or other soft melting cheese
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs, or other dry bread crumbs
good olive oil
hot sauce

Mix the canned ingredients in a bowl. Beat the eggs and ricotta with a fork until well blended. Mix the herbs, garlic, salt and pepper into the egg mixture. Add mixture to canned ingredients and stir well to mix.

Butter an 8" soufflé dish or other deep casserole dish. Spread half the casserole mix in the dish. Sprinkle a thorough layer of panko over the mix – enough to coat but not more than 1/4" deep. Layer half the mozzarella over the panko. Spread the other half of the casserole mix on top of the mozzarella. Sprinkle on another layer of panko. Layer the other half of the mozzarella on top. Finish with a little sprinkle of panko, mixed with some chopped parsley if you feel fancy.

Bake in a 350 oven for a about an hour, or until it is very hot in the middle and bubbly on the top. Reheats very well. Serve with olive oil for drizzling and hot sauce.

* Whether you need to add any salt at all depends on how salty the cheese is and the canned ingredients. 

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Book Beginnings: Polite Society

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER: If you are on Twitter, please tweet a link to your post using the has tag #BookBeginnings. My Twitter handle is @GilionDumas.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

The color of night, Sharon moves toward the pickup truck.  She looks at the grille and headlights, "smiling" in a way that only they can, before she pops the hood with hardly a creak, silently thanks her father for teaching his only child about the inner workings of cars, and makes the adjustments that will keep the old Chevy out of commission for what she hopes to be several days. 

-- Polite Society, the quirky debut novel by Colleen Sohn, illustrated by Maren Jensen.

  

There are still a few of the lovely, limited edition hardbacks left (see here for details). And, Polite Society is now available in a Kindle edition, with all the illustrations.

Review: Doctor Zhivago

I probably watched Doctor Zhivago three or four times in high school and college and never could remember the plot, beyond the basics about Omar Sharif being in love with two women – his earnest wife Tanya and the elusive, flawed, and beautiful Lara. Other than that, it was all snow, trains, battles, furry hats, theme music, and Julie Christie's doe eyes.

The book is the same, but without the balaclava music or Julie Christie.

There is a chronological order to it, but with big gaps. Some threads take so long to tie together I had forgotten where they started. And in between scenes of snow, trains, trains stopped by snow, trains buried by snow, battles, battles in snow, battles on trains, and more of the same, were rambling discourses on religion and political philosophy. And I thought the movie was slow!

The themes are grand and the writing, even in translation, is beautiful. Boris Pasternak won the Nobel Prize because of the book, although the Soviet government forced him to renounce the honor. There are many reasons to read Doctor Zhivago and many reasons to enjoy it. But it is a long and often frustrating read.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

I read this one for the Eastern Europe Reading Challenge, the TBR Pile Challenge, the Mt. TBR Challenge, and the Off The Shelf Challenge. Since Pasternak won the Nobel Prize, I also made some progress on that list.

Review: How to Read and Why

 

Several years ago, I read Great Books by David Denby and was inspired to upgrade my reading program significantly. At 48, Dendy had returned to Columbia University to take its controversial "Great Books" course and wrote his about his reawakened appreciation for and engagement with the Western canon.

Denby reminded me of the intellectual and emotional pleasure I had gotten from my own college courses on classic literature. He motivated me to go back to some of those classics and to search out other Great Books. As a result, I undertook to finish the books on the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century list (the inspiration for this blog), bought the complete 54-volume set of The Great Books of the Western World at a library sale, and, more lastingly, began to read more deliberately.

I turned to Harold Bloom's How to Read and Why with the expectation that it would arouse the same enthusiasm in me. I was looking for bibliophile red meat and was disappointed by the thin gruel between the covers. There was enough there to keep me going, but now, a couple of months later, nothing has really stuck with me.

Bloom organized his discussion by short stories, poems, novels, and plays, then picked a few of his favorites from each and explained what he liked about them. If this was touted as a collection of essays by a brilliant literature professor reflecting on his favorite books, I may have enjoyed it more. But Bloom didn't impart to me why I should read these books, only why he did. And his lessons for how to read them seemed interchangeable – read them out loud, read them for their irony, re-read them, etc.

I think I would have been happier reading Bloom's seminal work, The Western Canon, and leaving How to Read and Why to his more ardent devotees.

OTHER REVIEWS

If you would like your review of this book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

NOTES

This counts for the Non-Fiction Challenge, Mt. TBR Challenge, Off The Shelf Challenge,  and TBR Pile Challenge, 

Teaser Tuesday: Fierce Conversations

Above all, as you describe reality from your perspective, do not lay blame. . . . Each time you describe reality accurately, without laying blame, you create a kind of force field around yourself -- one that feels good to others.

-- Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott. I really like what this book promises and have been looking forward to reading it. 

But this passage has me confused. One of the main reasons I am reading the book is to learn how to have difficult conversations with people when they screw up.  I am now confused about how to confront someone about a mistake or a wrongdoing -- and get them to accept responsibility -- without "blaming" the person. Hopefully, as I move through the book I will figure out this conundrum.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.