I really, really, really want to be the kind of person who makes casseroles. When one of my friends has a baby, breaks a leg, suffers a loss—kapow!—I want to be there with a pan of something homemade and wonderful. Unfortunately, the tragic truth is that the only casserole I actually know how to make is my famous lasagna, which takes one day of shopping and one day of cooking, and is such a hassle that I haven't made it in two years. Consequently, all my friends who have babies get Vietnamese take-out. They think this is fine, but I don't! I want to make casseroles. Just not the ones the Midwest is famous for (also known locally as "hot dish"). I don't want to make anything that involves cream of scary industrial anonymity soup. All of which is why when I heard that Beatrice Ojakangas, one of America's leading Scandinavian bakers, was working on a book with some 500 new casseroles, I started pestering her with phone calls.
"You understand that this isn't going to be available for probably a year, maybe a year and a half?" asked Ojakangas. I assured her I did. This was, literally, my fifth phone call to the poor woman. I suspected that with all 500 recipes due next week her defenses would be down, and she would be forced to reveal the secrets of her new casseroles.
"Are they healthier?" I demanded. "Yes," Ojakangas sighed, from her Duluth, Minnesota home. "You don't have to use cream of mushroom soup—that's what everyone thinks of when they think of casseroles of course, but I don't really use them. I've got some alternative sauces—a basic white sauce, a basic mushroom sauce, a béchamel, a savory tomato sauce, and a quick Alfredo. When you're finished, you know exactly what's in your food."
Furthermore, Ojakangas explained, her recipes are international: She's got Indian lamb rogan josh, Finnish cabbage casserole, Korean beef strips, and Brazilian feijoada. And they draw on the range of whole grains and vegetables that so many health-minded folks want to eat: baked quinoa with new potatoes; wild rice and carrots baked in a simple custard. Finally, explained Ojakangas, this new generation of casseroles maintains one thing in common with the bad old casseroles of yesterday—they're convenient for the cook, and thrifty. "And now I really have to go to the grocery store," Ojakangas told me, firmly easing me off the phone. "You know how it is, you're always one thing short."
Actually, I don't, as my world of casseroles still revolves around that lasagna I don't make. So: Will I ever turn into the casserole-cooking queen of my dreams? Will casseroles cast off their tater-tot past and become the wasabi foam of the next generation? Check back with me in—argh!—a year and a half for the answer.
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