After the holidays, our pants a little (or a lot) tighter than they were a month or two ago, we’re all craving something lighter. Or at least we’re supposed to. At the moment, I appear to be holding out.
Why? Well, I’ve just started another few months of paternity leave, and I’m feeling a layered mixture of hope and anxiety as my husband and I mark six months that we’ve had the latest (and possibly last) foster son, a smart and talented 14-year-old we are working to make a permanent part of the family. (As they say, the third time’s a charm.)
That’s one factor. The others: We just emerged from a bone-chilling cold spell, one that caused two pipes to freeze and one to burst, leaving us without water for a few days. Finally (I hope), I have been dealing with a benign and temporary — but acutely painful — health condition that has been dragging on longer than anticipated.
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For all those reasons, I’m still plenty interested in rib-sticking comfort food and probably will be for a while.
If you’re familiar with hotdish (Midwestern for casserole), you know that nothing is heartier or more comforting, and you might know that the reigning queen of hotdish is Molly Yeh, the cookbook author and Food Network star whose new book celebrates her take on Chinese-Jewish-Midwestern cooking. Yeh is also trying to serve nourishing food to her husband and two young children, and this recipe is her take on pizza hotdish, which she calls “basically pepperoni pizza toppings tossed with pasta and ground beef.” After she saw Deb Perelman’s famous “pizza beans,” she decided to sub cannellini beans for the pasta and meat, making what she calls a “pizza-adjacent casserole that I feel a whole lot better about serving my family on a non-pizza night.”
She calls it Veggie Supreme White Bean Hotdish, and it’s a straightforward recipe to make, with bell pepper, spinach, black olives, beans, tomato and more, “bound together by cheese, all cozy under a blanket of breadcrumbs dressed up like garlic bread.”
If possible, make it in a vessel that can slide from stovetop to oven, because nothing says self-care like one fewer pot to wash. Or make it ahead and refrigerate or freeze in a casserole dish, baking directly from frozen.
The next time I make it, I think I’ll double the recipe and freeze half. Then, when I say this is the kind of thing that can satisfy me and the family until spring, I’ll be speaking literally.
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