Let's Casserole (and Fry, and Boil, and...)

The Only Cookbook You'll Ever Need (Zoë Camrass, 1977) is not a lot like my other cookbooks. That means you were correct when you just guessed that it's not loaded with recipes calling for various combinations of canned fruit cocktail, undiluted cream of something soup, cans of chow mein noodles, and packets of lime Jell-O. (The book does have a recipe for lemon or orange gelatin, flavored with actual lemons or oranges, but it's billed as a standalone dessert and not part of an elaborate "salad" full of marshmallows, mayonnaise, celery, nuts, cherries, and pickles.)

The unique thing about this book is the way it's set up. It's organized by cooking method, which is something I hadn't seen before. That means the first section has basic prep rules for fish and shellfish, then poultry and game birds, meat and game, vegetables, fruit, cereals, and eggs and dairy. Then there's a section on boiling and steaming, starting with fish and shellfish and cycling clear through to eggs and dairy. Then the cycle starts again with "Stewing and Casseroling" fish, etc. (And yes, Camrass does use "casseroling" as a verb, which makes me almost as happy as I feel when I hit a garage sale with a pile of 50-cent cookbooks from somebody's grandma.)

So today, we're going to look at a weird representative from each section of the book, starting with the "Basic Preparation" chapter.

I don't see a lot of beer soup recipes, but this has some similarity to the Bavarian recipe I posted a few years ago-- minus the whipped egg whites and with the addition of sliced French bread in the bottom of the bowl. (Plus, this version doesn't come with serving suggestions, so I'm not sure whether anyone served Soupe à la Bière as an after school snack, as the other recipe suggests.)

For the "Boiling and Steaming" chapter, I picked out a recipe that doesn't appear to involve either:

Lima Bean and Mackerel Salad dumps together beany and fishy components with sour cream, lemon juice, seasonings, and shallots, but I guess the authors count cooking the lima beans first as the boiling step, even though it should be done before the recipe officially starts.

At least the "Stewing and Casseroling" chapter casseroles the hell out of some lettuce:

I'm not sure why anyone would really want heads of lettuce that had been baked for 45 minutes after a brief boil (maybe fear of E. coli?), but this has BACON. I guess even back in the 1970s, cooks realized they could get people to eat pretty much anything if it had bacon.

How about something dramatic for the "Broiling" chapter?

I'd call this recipe "Fish in Hell," but Camrass goes for the more subdued Sea Bass with Herbes Flambé.

It would definitely make for a memorable dinner party (especially if someone accidentally caught the dining room on fire and sent everyone else to hell to keep the fish company).

For "Frying and Sautéing," the book has somewhat of an Elvis special.

Of course, the Banana and Bacon Fritters lack the peanut butter, but I'll bet it would be easy to make a peanut butter dipping sauce to go with them.

And finally, to represent the "Roasting and Baking" section, one of the weirder layer cakes I've seen....

I know Baked Chicken Pancakes is not explicitly billed as a layer cake, but it's much closer to a layer cake than to, say, the dish of chicken and waffles that may spring to mind when you hear the name. With its pancake layers stacked together with a thick chicken, mushroom, and shrimp filling and a mornay sauce glaze, this is a birthday cake for those annoying friends who go on and on about how they've cut sugar out of their lives. Just shove a few candles through the mornay sauce and into the pancakes once this comes out of the oven.

So there you have it-- a quick tour of The Only Cookbook You'll Ever Need. While I'm not sure I'd define "need" in quite the same way as the author, I'm glad it gave me an excuse to show you how to really cook your romaine to avoid food-borne illness and to set your fish aflame.