A Little Bit of Home Cookin' (from a restaurant!)

In the late 80's and early 90's I lived in Houston, Texas.  There is a restaurant there called the Black-Eyed Pea that is known for its 'home-cookin.'  Admittedly, it is odd to go out to a restaurant to get home cooking, but I was fresh out of college and I wasn't married at the time and I was 3 hours away from my Momma. Now, I like home cooking. Scratch that.  I love home cooking.  I enjoyed going to the Black-Eyed Pea to eat their meatloaf or pot roast or chicken and dumplings with some cornbread on the side.  They also served a casserole that was out of this world good.  In fact, if you closed your eyes while you ate it, you could almost imagine that it was baked with love from the dear, sweet lady that sits on the pew in front of you at church that made her specialty for the pot-luck in the fellowship hall.

I'm talking about Baked Squash Casserole.  Our family loves it.  I think even folks who don't like vegetables would eat it.  Well, back about 24 years ago, the recipe for this casserole ran in the Food Section of the Houston Chronicle and I was excited and cut it out and taped it to an index card.  Each year when we're picking yellow crookneck squash from the garden, we'll pull this winner of a recipe out of the recipe box and make it.

Here it is:

Mmmm - mmmmm!

Here is our cornucopia of freshly produced ingredients for the recipe.  (Except for the butter.  While we had homemade butter in the fridge, we wanted to save it.)  Note that we substituted some local honey for the sugar that was called for in the recipe.

We chopped up the yellow squash in the vegetable chopper and dropped it all in a pot of water and brought it to a boil, cooking until soft.

Boiling the chopped squash

The remaining ingredients were prepped, measured and arranged.  This really is a fast, almost effortless dish.

Eggs, melted butter, honey, bread crumbs, and green onions

After draining all the water out using a colander, take a potato masher and mash up all the cooked squash. There's no scientific method to this, just squish it all up.

Mashed up squash

Dump the remaining ingredients to the pot and stir it up.

Adding the remaining ingredients

Instead of using black pepper, we shake some homemade pepper that we made by drying and grinding up Criolla Sella peppers.  The flavor is remarkable, sort of smoky with a hint of spicy heat, but not overly hot.

Criolla Sella Pepper

Then we spoon the contents into a 3 quart casserole that we've buttered and we sprinkle some of the bread crumbs we reserved on top.  We place it in the oven at 350 Fahrenheit and bake it until the top of the casserole is golden brown. 

Into the Oven

Another way to tell if it is nearing completion is if the kitchen begins filling with hungry people who can smell the deliciousness wafting out of the oven and beckoning them to come eat.  The appointed time has come.  It is ready.  Prepare thyself.

Lovin' from the oven

We say grace, thanking the Good LORD for his provision and we serve up our plates. In order to properly enjoy a home cooked casserole, the other ingredients must be thoughtfully coordinated.  Tonight we accompanied the Baked Squash Casserole with some fried chicken livers from our homegrown meat birds that were rolled in seasoned flour and pan-fried in butter in a well-seasoned cast iron skillet.

That's nice right there.  Real nice

A zoomed in look:

Moist, steaming, buttery, tempting...

And finally a fork-view before it goes "down the hatch":

Time to Eat!

If you were here, why I'd direct you to the drawer where we keep the silverware and the cupboard where the plates are served.  We'd pour you a cup of milk and pass the chicken livers and baked squash casserole over your way.  Eat well, friends!