The I Hate to Cook Book (6 page)

5–6 servings

flour

vegetable oil

2½-pound fryer (or 2½ pounds breasts or thighs)

¾ cup uncooked rice

salt, pepper

1 tablespoon grated onion (or half a garlic clove, minced)

6.5-ounce can of mushrooms

2 chicken bouillon cubes dissolved in 1¾ cups water

½ stick butter

Flour and then brown the chicken in a little vegetable oil. While it browns, put the rice, salt, and pepper in a greased casserole and strew the grated onion about. Put in the mushrooms, juice and all. Arrange the chicken artfully on top, pour the bouillon over it, and dot with the butter. Cover it. Bake it at 350˚ for an hour.

     SATURDAY CHICKEN     

4–6 servings

(Closely related to Sunday Chicken,
here
.)

1 cut-up fryer (or any 6 good-sized pieces of chicken)

salt and garlic salt

paprika

1 can condensed cream of mushroom or cream of celery soup

1 cup heavy cream (don’t cheat and use milk; the cream makes a lot of difference)

chopped parsley

Take your chicken and salt and garlic salt it a bit, then paprika it thoroughly. Next, spread it out, in one layer, in a shallow baking pan. Dilute the soup with the cream, pour it over the chicken, and sprinkle the chopped parsley prettily on top. Bake it, uncovered, at 350˚ for one and a half hours.

Speaking of cooking, incidentally, and I believe we were, one of its worst facets is grocery shopping. When you hate to cook, a supermarket is an appalling place. You see so many things that they all blur, and you finally end up with a glazed look and a chop. So take this cookbook along when you go shopping. Then, when you see a can of shrimp, for instance, it might ring a far-away bell, and you can look in your little book to see what we’d do with it, we women who hate to cook. We’d commit

     HURRY CURRY     

4–6 servings

1 cup uncooked rice

½ cup chopped onion

½ teaspoon curry powder

1 tablespoon butter

1 can frozen condensed cream of shrimp soup (or 1 can undiluted cream of celery or mushroom soup with 3 ounces of fresh or canned shrimp)

1 cup sour cream

1 cup cooked shrimp

parsley

paprika

Start the rice cooking. Then, in the top part of your double boiler, simmer the onion and curry powder in the butter till the
onion’s tender but not brown. Add the frozen soup, set the pan over hot water, and stir till it’s smooth. Add the sour cream and the shrimp, and heat till it’s hot clear through. Serve over hot rice, with sprigs of parsley and a spatter of paprika.

(If you keep a jar of chutney in the refrigerator—it keeps practically forever—you can serve it forth whenever you make a curry dish, and you’ll feel less guilty about skipping the chopped peanuts and green onions and all those other messy little odds and ends.)

Also, even simpler and cheaper, we’d make

     PORTLAND PILAFF     

3–4 servings

1 cup uncooked rice

½ stick butter (4 tablespoons)

1 can chicken broth diluted with ½ can water (or 2 chicken bouillon cubes dissolved in 2 cups hot water)

a bit of chopped onion, green or otherwise

2 4-ounce cans shrimp

Use a heavy, ovenproof skillet. Cook the rice in the butter till it’s the color of a nice camel’s-hair coat. Add the chicken broth and onion, cover the skillet, and bake for thirty-five minutes at 325˚. Now open the can of shrimp, drain them, and pour the little rascals in. (If you can afford two cans, so much the better.) Bake for ten more minutes.

     CANCAN CASSEROLE     

3–4 servings

(This is about the easiest tuna casserole that ever happened, and it’s quite good.)

Beat two eggs and add a can of evaporated milk. Then add

2½ cups cream-style corn

6.5-ounce can chunk tuna, broken a bit with a fork

1 green pepper, chopped

1 middle-sized onion, grated

Pour it all into a buttered casserole dish and bake it, uncovered, at 325˚ for one hour.

     TUNA-RICE CURRY     

3–4 servings

(Handy to know about, because you probably have on hand everything it calls for. Incidentally, if you keep canned cream sauce in the house, it hurries things up.)