The Hotdish

Where I come from, we don't have casseroles.  We don't have goulash.  We have hotdish.  Hotdish is exactly as its name suggests--a hot dish full of goodness and comfort.  The ubiquitous "Tator Tot Hotdish" remains perhaps the most well known of all hotdishes, but any variety of hotdish can exist because--and here's the best part--there's really no recipe for hotdish.  You can make it out of anything you have on hand, although typically one of the following is needed:

• large baking dish
• grain or substantive vegetable (potato, rice, wild rice, zucchini, eggplant, bread)
• meat or beans
• "sauce", most typically one or more cans of condensed soup (cream of mushroom and tomato being the old standards)

 Now sure, there are plenty of church cookbooks with hotdish recipes in them, and certainly I have used these recipes before.  But these "recipes" are nothing more than "guidelines" as its pretty hard to mess up hotdish, as evidenced by my improvisation of hotdish for last night's dinner.  I'll call it (ready for my stunning originality) "South of the Border Hotdish."  It was my attempt to use up end-of-season peppers and tomatoes from our garden, potatoes that were starting to get soft, the bottom-of-the-bag tortilla chips, and dehydrated black bean dip that has been sitting in our pantry for years.

I started out by slicing 5 potatoes very thinly and layering on the bottom of a greased baking dish.

Then I spread one can of Campbell's cheddar cheese soup mixed with a tablespoon of milk (to thin it out--it could have used a bit more) over the potatoes.  I popped this in a 350 degree oven while I prepared the rest.

Chopped lots of onion and pepper and tomato.  Fried that up with two links of chorizo.  Set aside.

Made the black bean dip by mixing it with some water and popping it in the microwave for a minute or so.  Then I mixed in a can of drained black beans.   I took out the potatoes from the oven, then spread the black bean mixture over the potatoes.

Then I put the chorizo/pepper mixture over that and topped it all with shredded cheddar cheese and the crushed up bits of tortilla chips left at the bottom of our near empty bag in the pantry.  Popped it in for another 20 minutes, and success!

Another hotdish proudly made for consumption by hearty Midwesterners everywhere.