Mom's Seafood Casserole

Mom's Seafood Casserole over white rice

My mother, Diane, spent a lot of time in the kitchen when I was a kid.  She had five kids and a husband who ate every meal as if he believed it to be his very last, taking seconds and thirds, and then eating whatever we kids had left on our plates.  I'm told he ate with the same "don't get your hands too close to his mouth" gusto in childhood, and luckily for him, he had apparently retained his childhood metabolism.  A normal person, consuming the same number of calories he did every day, would have needed a crane, a motivational speaker, and Crisco on the doorjambs in order to leave the house in the mornings.  Sadly, I did not inherit his metabolism.  Luckily, I didn't inherit his seemingly unquenchable hunger, either.  But I do looooove good food, mostly the buttery, creamy, cheesy, carb-laden, bad-for-me kind, so I keep that can of Crisco on standby.

So, anyway, my mom did a lot of cooking.  I'd like to wax poetic and hyperbolic about my mother's skill in the kitchen...largely because she deserves all the poetry and hyperbole I can muster.  I'd like to say she was Julia Child's younger, prettier rival for Best Chef of All Time.  I'd like to say that every dish she ever served made you thank the deity of your choice for being born with tastebuds.  I'd like to say that what she could do to a rump roast would make a grown man cry, and leave lesser moms wringing their hands with feelings of shame and inadequacy.  I'd really like to, but not to put too fine a point on it, my mom's cooking was generally just ok.  Yeah, I said it.

To be fair, I seem to be alone in my opinion.  My siblings and father remember it differently, but I recall a lot of baked chicken with salt and pepper as the only embellishment, a lot of instant mashed potatoes, and a lot of frozen veggies that had never even come within spitting distance of a can of cream of mushroom soup, much less a Hollandaise sauce.  In fairness to my mother, I should point out that back in the day, when she was regularly slaving over a hot stove for a bunch of ungrateful yahoos (before she hung up her apron for good, which was shortly after dad walked out), Pinterest hadn't been invented yet.  Pinterest can make even the most (whatever the culinary equivalent for "tone deaf" is) among us want to be a better, more adventurous person in the kitchen.  It can make the most cooking-averse, grease fire-prone, poison control on speed dial-havingest, dyed-in-the-wool, walking kitchen disaster want to pull all the books, spare tools, and back issues of Martha Stewart Living out of her unused oven, and figure out where the broil setting is, regardless of the inevitably hideous outcome.  I know this because I AM that person, and despite all the 2nd degree burns, blackened ceilings, and hastily Googled "Can you die from eating the 'freshness' packet that comes in the refrigerated pasta packages and looks just like those silica packets that fall out of new shoe boxes?"-type questions, I still want to give that Pin for Buffalo Chicken Cupcakes a try.  I think Mom would have been just as "Pinspired", but likely would have incurred far fewer threats of legal action in the process. Certainly, she would have met fewer emergency personnel.  But I digress.

My point, and I do have one, is that for the most part, where the majority of my mother's cooking was concerned, I could take it or leave it.  Except for the special stuff.

During the "dad in residence" years, and... if we asked really nicely... during the "post-dad" years, Mom would make one of her special dishes.  By "special", I mean favorite, and by "favorite", I mean the stuff she really hit out of the park.  I mean the dishes that NEVER failed to satisfy and cause envy in our friends' hearts.  These are the dishes we still talk about with dreamy looks on our faces, the recipes we'll be passing on to our children.  Based solely on these, I really can say my mom was a phenomenal cook.

Probably my all-time favorite of these is Mom's Seafood Casserole, and I am happy to share it here.  I would like to point out that the pics are of my own fearless attempt at this recipe, just last week, and I was only partially supervised by my little sister, Erica, and I only burned it a little (damned sneaky bastards, those broilers).  Also, everyone is fine, despite the initial nausea, which we ultimately decided was due to a combination of sun-poisoning from the lake visit and too much wine.  No, really.  Leftovers the next day were delicious, and no nausea at all.  I swear.  :-)

Mom's Seafood Casserole

Ingredients:

1 pound raw medium to large shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 pound raw bay scallops (or whichever those little ones are called)

1 pound fake crab chunks

1 pint heavy whipping cream

1 cup milk, 2% or whole

1 half of a large yellow onion, diced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 cup bread crumbs (depending on how thick you want it)

salt and pepper to taste

butter

a generous splash of dry cooking sherry (white wine works fine too)

rice ( 1/2 cup to 1 cup, cooked, per serving of casserole)


Ok, here we go:

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Use oil or butter to grease up a 13x9 baking pan.  I used glass, but Mom always used one of those Corning Ware oval baking dishes with the glass tops (topless in the oven, though).

In a big mixing bowl, combine the shrimp, scallops, and "crab" with the cream and milk, mixing pretty thoroughly.  Don't worry if the "crab" starts to unravel a bit.  Fake crab does that.  Add in the breadcrumbs til you think it's as thick as you want it.  Granted, it's hard to say til you make it that first time and see for yourself, but generally I use between 1 and 2 cups.  You want the finished casserole to ladle over the rice and soak in a bit.  You aren't trying for cornbread-type baked squares.  Though, I have accidentally done that, and it tasted good, too.

Set that aside, and use about a tablespoon of butter (or however much you prefer) to saute the diced onions in your frying pan.  When they start getting translucent, throw in the minced garlic and saute til no darker than a hint of golden.  You don't want brown garlic, apparently.  (The fresh garlic thing is Erica's idea...Mom always just used garlic powder with the salt and pepper...you can too, if you like.)

Before the garlic goes brown, pour a generous splash of the dry cooking sherry (I used white wine) into the pan and scrape it around the sides and bottom, mixing it in with the onions and garlic, and let it cook down a bit. This does two things.  It cleans the scorchy stuff from the pan, and it adds extra flavor.  Erica tells me this is called "deglazing".  Pretty nifty!  Beats the hell out of soaking my frying pan for two days, and who doesn't like extra flavor?

Add the onions and garlic to the bowl of seafood mixture, mix it in, and then taste it.  Now start adding salt and pepper (and garlic powder if you didn't go the "fresh garlic" route) until you get it where you want it.  Pour into the pan and bake at 350 degrees for about an hour, or until it's golden and bubbly.  I turned on the broiler for a couple of minutes at the end, but be careful with that...

Once you pop that into the oven, start boiling your rice.  Brown rice takes about 45 minutes.  My mom would sometimes use egg noodles, and that was good, too, but I prefer rice.

When the casserole is done, let it cool for a bit and solidify a little.  Ladle it over individual servings of rice.  I like to eat it with garlic bread.  Have I mentioned my love of carbs?

This yields about 8 servings.  I have no idea what the calorie count is, but I was a pound and a half heavier the next day.  Just sayin'....

Happy Birthday, Mom...