Touching Up My Roots: Spanish Rice

It was appropriate that, when going through my recipe box the other day, I ran across my mom's recipe for Spanish rice. Appropriate because it's been almost exactly ten years since she passed away suddenly, ten years during which I think of her almost every day, sometimes fleetingly, sometimes with a pang when I run across a spectacular rose on my walk through the neighborhood and think, "Oh, she'd love the blush on this one!" (She had a particular thing for roses, which she grew in abundance at my parents' home in The Dalles.)

My mother (r), me as a teenager (l).

For me, food has always been a connection to her, though not in the way that most food writers speak about their Jewish or Greek or African American grandmothers passing on generations of food culture to their offspring. My mother was a practical cook who came of age in the post-World War II switch to convenience food, when if you had a family of five to feed you bought ground hamburger, cans of vegetables, boxes of cake mix and Bisquick. Not that she couldn't "put up" multitudes of jars of fruit with her dark blue graniteware canner or use two dinner knives to cut up butter and Crisco, producing what I still remember as pie crusts that any pastry chef would envy.

But her milieu was the middle American cooking of Betty Crocker and Ladies Home Journal, the advice of practical how-to guides of the time like Joy of Cooking. So we grew up on dinners like tuna casserole and Swiss steak, with the occasional exotic soupçon of tacos made with hamburger browned in packaged taco seasoning or a "goulash"—more hamburger spiced with chili powder and tossed with frozen corn and noodles.

My recipe box, broken lid and all.

I still have—and make—my mom's recipes for pineapple carrot cake and potato salad. Though I've switched to James Beard as inspiration for my macaroni and cheese, and I've updated her tuna casserole with Oregon albacore and chanterelles rather than Campbell's cream of mushroom soup. So when I found that recipe card for her Spanish rice, it begged for some zhuzhing, too. It occurred to me, when browning the hamburger and pondering the origin of the name, that it bears a certain distant, Americanized resemblance to paella. Adding a handful of chopped Spanish olives (we keep them around for martinis on Friday evenings), switching the green bell pepper for a poblano pepper and adding a good dose of smoked paprika made a passable, and quick, version I think she'd approve of.

Spanish Rice

2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 lb. hamburger
1 yellow onion, cut in 1/4" dice
1 poblano pepper, seeded and chopped in 1/4" dice
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp. smoked paprika (Spanish pimenton)
1 c. rice
1/2 c. Spanish green olives, chopped (optional)
2 c. roasted tomatoes, puréed (or tomato sauce)

1 3/4 c. water

2 tsp. salt (or to taste)

Heat the oil in a deep skillet over medium-high heat. Brown the hamburger, breaking it up into a fine crumble as it browns. Add the onion and sauté until tender, then add the poblano pepper and garlic and sauté until tender. Add the paprika, rice and olives and stir to combine, then add the puréed tomatoes, water and salt. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat to low, cover tightly and cook until rice is done, 20 to 30 minutes.

A Tamale Pie My Mother Would Recognize

Before Blue Apron and Purple Carrot, there was Hamburger Helper and Swanson's frozen dinners. Before that, in the days of yore when I was growing up, when my father didn't have time to hunt down a brontosaurus, my mother made do with Campbell's cream of mushroom soup and an arsenal of Lipton's dehydrated products. Spanish rice, tuna casserole and pot roast were her go-to dinners, egged on by the women's magazines of the day like the Ladies Home Journal that—shades of Betty Draper—gave busy homemakers tips on "quick dinners your family will love!"

Tamale pie was one of those dinner solutions, though in the days when most Americans considered spaghetti sauce "spicy food," its call for the addition of chili powder was a bridge too far for many. But my dad loved him some zing, so my mom would occasionally pep up her dinner rotation with chili powder-inflected goulash or tacos with hot sauce.

I'd been looking for a tamale pie recipe for those times when I'm feeling a bit of nostalgia for the casserole dinners of my childhood, and my friend Lizzy shared one recently that brought back a flood of cornmeal-scented, cheesy memories. Updated with a few adaptations using local cornmeal and grassfed beef, locally grown and roasted tomatoes and some tangy cheddar from Face Rock Creamery in Bandon, it fit the bill perfectly. I hope it will for you, too!

Tamale Pie

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 onion
2 poblano peppers, chopped in 1/4” dice
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 lbs. ground meat (beef, chicken or turkey)
2 c. roasted tomatoes
2 c. corn kernels
1/2 c. chicken stock
2 tsp. ancho chile powder
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 c. cornmeal
1 c. grated cheddar or jack cheese
Salt to taste

Preheat oven to 350°.

Heat oil in large skillet over medium high heat. (If using cast iron skillet, you can bake the casserole in it, as well.) When it shimmers, add ground meat and sauté until the meat is browned. Add onion and sauté until tender, about 3 minutes. Add garlic and pepper and sauté until softened, about 5 minutes. Add chile powder and cumin and stir briefly, then add tomatoes, corn kernels and broth. Bring to a simmer. Salt to taste.

While meat mixture simmers, bring 2 cups water to a boil. Slowly add cornmeal, stirring vigorously to prevent lumping. (Mixture will be quite thick.) Add 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste. Stir cornmeal mixture into other ingredients. Put mixture into casserole (if you are using a cast iron skillet, you can bake the casserole in this). Sprinkle cheese over the top and bake about 30 minutes.

Here's another version of tamale pie with a cornbread topping.

Flashback to Childhood: Tamale Pie

My mother was a ground meat maven. With three growing kids, hamburger gave her a relatively cheap way to feed a large family, and the women's magazines she subscribed to—filled with advice on wifely skills like cooking, entertaining and raising children—invariably had several recipes in each issue that called for a pound or two.

It was a time when herbs like thyme, basil and oregano were considered exotic, when Italian food was too spicy for some folks and, when tacos were introduced to middle-class tables, they were made with oil-fried tortillas, hamburger and Tillamook medium cheddar. In addition to tacos, ground beef was a primary ingredient in (so-called) Spanish rice, spaghetti sauce and a version of "goulash" that featured macaroni noodles, canned corn and more cheddar. Each of which made regular appearances on our dinner table.

Every once in awhile in a fit of nostalgia I'll get a craving for one of my mom's aforementioned dinner classics—I've already written about my reimagining of her tuna casserole—and I'll start going through the little metal boxes of recipes I copied out onto 3" by 5" cards when I was leaving for college. If that fails to turn up a lead, I'll resort to searching online for some clues.

A couple of weeks ago I'd pulled some grass-fed ground beef out of the freezer from the portion I bought from Clare at Big Table Farm and was musing over the possibilities. What sprang to mind was the cornbread-topped, chili powder-inflected American-take-on-Mexican casserole my mother would carry to the table and set before her ravening offspring.

Tamale Pie

For the cornbread topping:
1 c. flour
1 c. cornmeal
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 c. milk
2 Tbsp. butter or margarine, melted
2 eggs
1 c. cheddar cheese, grated

For the filling:
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 lb. hamburger
1 onion, chopped fine
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 poblano or Anaheim chiles, chopped fine
1 1/2 c. corn
1 tsp. oregano
2 tsp. chili powder
2 tsp. cumin
2 c. roasted tomatoes
Salt to taste

Preheat oven to 375°.

Mix dry ingredients for topping in medium mixing bowl. Add milk, melted butter and eggs. Stir to combine. Add cheese and mix thoroughly.

Heat oil in large skillet. Add hamburger and brown, chopping into small bits as it cooks. Add onion and garlic and sauté till tender. Add chiles and corn and sauté till chiles are tender. Add spices and tomatoes and bring to simmer. Pour into 9" by 12" baking dish. Top with corn batter by dropping spoonfuls on top of the hamburger mixture and gently spreading it to cover the top. Place baking dish in oven and bake 45 min. until topping is browned.

Touching Up My Roots: Tuna Casserole

What to do with all those mushrooms I collected on my trip to the mountain, especially since they really don't last long in the refrigerator and needed to be dealt with quickly? After sautéing a few for snacking on while I cleaned the rest, I took Michael Ruhlman's advice and loaded them in a roasting pan, drizzled them with a tiny bit of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and put them in the oven to roast.

What came out was a pan full of deep golden mushrooms swimming in a broth of the liquid that had seeped out of them (top photo). Realizing that chanterelle broth was probably not readily available on the shelf at the store, I drained off the liquid, chopped up the mushrooms and bagged them for storing in the freezer.

I had a cup or so of mushrooms left over and pondered the best and highest use of this treasure, this wonder from the wilds. And that's when it hit me. A dish from my childhood, something comforting and full of personal meaning.

The solution.

"Tuna noodle casserole!" I crowed. I've mentioned my love of that 50s-era "convenience" food before, the one my mother made practically every Friday night of my childhood, right?

But mine wasn't going to be a casserole made from a processed cream-like substance with little brown bits floating around in it and with shreds of big brand, mercury-laced chunk light tuna, no sir. I'd make the cream sauce from the roasted mushroom broth and those golden mushrooms and with a tin of low-mercury, line-caught and Monterey Bay Aquarium-approved Oregon albacore. And, since I know you'll ask, no, there were no Kettle salt'n'pepper potato chips crumbled on top—I wasn't brought up that lucky!

Chanterelle and Oregon Albacore Casserole

2 Tbsp. butter
2 Tbsp. flour
2 c. milk or cream or a combination of both
1 c. mushroom stock, preferably from the roasted chanterelles, below
1 c. (approx.) roasted chanterelle mushrooms, roughly chopped
1 6-oz. can Oregon albacore tuna (drain and reserve juice)
1 lb. dried pasta

Heat oven to 350°.

Put pot of water for pasta on to boil. Meanwhile, melt butter in medium-sized saucepan over medium heat. Remove from heat and stir in flour until thoroughly combined. Replace on medium heat and cook, stirring constantly, until raw taste of flour is gone. Add milk and continue stirring until sauce thickens. Add mushroom stock, mushrooms and reserved juice from tuna and heat. (Because most Oregon albacore is packed fresh then cooked, the juice in the tin is from the tuna itself. If using albacore packed in water or oil, do not add to sauce.) Add salt and pepper to taste. Remove sauce from heat, stir in chunked albacore.

When pot of water boils, add pasta and cook till al dente. Drain. Mix pasta and sauce and pour into casserole (add crumbled potato chips if you must). Bake 30 min. until top is browned.

Note: After adding the mushrooms and mushroom broth to the sauce (but before adding tuna juice or tuna), you basically have a mushroom soup. Add salt and pepper to taste and call it dinner.