Pork mushroom casserole
From “Atkins Low Carb Diet Recipes” by Adam K. Randle. Serves 4.
Ingredients
- 12 oz. fresh mushrooms
- 1/4 cup chopped onion
- 3 tbsp. butter
- 1 lb. pork, browned and drained
- 1 pkg frozen spinach, thawed
- 1 pinch seasoning
- 3/4 cup heavy cream
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup swiss cheese
Method
Preheat oven to 375° F and grease casserole dish with butter. In a bowl combine cream, egg, and the egg yolks. Pour cream/egg mixture over everything else, browned and simmering. Bake 30 minutes.
This is one of the recipes where the author didn't give too much detail, which is annoying. First I browned the sausage in a covered frying pan along with the onions and mushrooms, which produced a significant amount of liquid and fat. I figured they didn't want us to include that in the casserole, because if you mixed the eggs in right away, they would cook too fast, so I drained the meat mixture and put it in the casserole dish and let it cool for 15 minutes. In retrospect, though, I'm thinking they probably did want the liquid in there. And I stupidly forgot the spinach.
The liquid from the pan smelled heavenly. I tasted it. Tastes heavenly. Yes, it's probably 50% fat, but the idea that fat is bad for us is balderdash. I decided to keep it and see if it made a decent pan sauce as is, though there was probably only a cup of it.
On the whole, the casserole came out all right, but the egginess of it seemed not all that inspiring, and I suspect it won't be so great as left overs. I ended up not using the pan drippings for flavoring after all.
Next time around, I think maybe a basic bechamel with Swiss cheese might be a better option for the sauce.
Cost
I wanted to estimate the cost of the dish. When dealing with small quantities of stuff, I just guesstimated whether it was closer to 10 cents or 25 cents. This ends up being kind of an expensive casserole for its size because of the heavy cream, swiss cheese and mushrooms.
2013-05-21: actually, this stuff isn't bad on the reheat if you do it slow in the microwave. In my current microwave I used 2 minutes at power 4 for three small pieces. Warmed them decently without drying out.