The I Hate to Cook Book (4 page)
To repeat, the important thing is contrast. Once I knew a little girl who often made herself Cracker Sandwiches. That’s right; she’d put a nice filling of oyster crackers between two slices of white bread. I think she grew up to be a hospital dietitian.
SWISS LOAF 
6–7 servings
(This is a somewhat more interesting sort of a meat loaf.)
2 pounds hamburger
1½ cups diced Swiss cheese
2 beaten eggs
½ cup chopped onion
½ cup chopped green pepper
1½ teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon celery salt
½ teaspoon paprika
2½ cups milk
1 cup dry bread crumbs
Just mix these things together in the approximate order they’re given, then press it all into one big greased loaf pan, or use two. Bake, uncovered, at 350˚ for about an hour and a half, then yodel for the family.
CHILLY-NIGHT CHILI
6–8 servings
(A good, cheap, classic chili recipe that’s easy to remember because it’s one of everything.)
1 pound hamburger
1 big onion, chopped
1 (or 2) 16-ounce cans of kidney beans, depending on how many you’re feeding
1 can tomato soup, undiluted
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon chili powder (then taste and add more if you like)
ripe olives, if they’re handy
Brown the meat and the onion in a little butter and cook till the meat is brown—about ten minutes. Add everything else, then let it simmer, covered, for half an hour.
Just a word here about what to serve
with
things. You may have noticed that many recipe books are full of suggestions. “With this,” they’ll say, “serve Curried Peaches, crisp hot cornsticks, and Angel Torte.”
The reason they do this isn’t just to be helpful. Between you and me, it is also to make that entrée recipe sound better. You
can make meat loaf sound almost exciting if you talk long enough about Crusty Cheese Potatoes and Heart of Artichoke Salad and Lime Sherbet and Fudge Cake, but you still haven’t changed the basically pedestrian quality of the meat loaf. Furthermore, when you hate to cook, what you serve with something is what you happen to have around; and you wouldn’t dream of cooking all those things for one meal anyway.
So this recipe book won’t suggest accompanying dishes very often, except in cases where it is really hard to think of one, or when the entrée looks a bit pathetic and needs bolstering.
Now for the
LAMB
department. Lamb, when you hate to cook, usually consists of chops or a leg of. It was a great day for me when I discovered lamb shanks.
LOVELY LAMB SHANKS
4–5 servings
4 lamb shanks, cracked*
1 peeled cut garlic clove
¼ cup flour
1 tablespoon paprika
1½ teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon pepper
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 cups hot water
1¼ cups uncooked rice
Shake your shanks, well rubbed with garlic, in a paper bag containing the flour and seasonings. Brown them on each and every side in the hot oil. Add the water and the garlic clove—speared with a toothpick, so you can find it later—and simmer,
covered, for an hour. Then add the rice, simmer, covered, for another half hour, and you’re done.
LAMB SHANKS TRA-LA
4–5 servings
(This has the easiest barbecue sauce you’ll ever make, and it’s very good, too.)
1 large onion, peeled and sliced thin
1 cup ketchup
1 cup water
½ cup mint jelly
2 tablespoons lemon juice
4 lamb shanks, cracked
*
flour, salt, pepper, to dredge meat in
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
Combine the first five ingredients and heat them until the jelly melts. Dredge the shanks in the flour, et cetera, and brown them in the oil in a Dutch oven or electric skillet. Be sure you pour off the excess fat after they’ve browned. Then pour the sauce on, cover, and simmer—basting once in a while, if you happen to think of it—for an hour and a half.
LAMB CHOPS MIGNON
You start with inch-thick lamb chops. Have the butcher cut the bones out of them. Wrap a bacon strip around each, and fasten it with a toothpick. Put a teaspoon each of Worcestershire sauce and ketchup on each chop, set them on a rack in the oven—with a drip pan beneath—and bake at 350˚ for about thirty-five minutes, until the bacon is crisp.