broccoli-potato(e?) cheese glop

or

what are we going to do with the broccoli this time?

It was a fish, potato, and veggie night. [Say, doesn't that sound like "It was a dark and stormy night."? Nevermind.]

Once we figured we'd make the veggie broccoli, we had to figure out how to make it interesting. We did not want to be accused of dull American cooking, even if we were eating alone. The general idea was clear. Kill it in the pressure cooker and hit it with some kind of cheese sauce. The details were anything but. (Clear.) So we went to the dr bob cooking team library and consulted the serious cookbooks. You know, the heaviest ones on the shelf. The ones you could use for weight training. No luck. On our own again.

Out came the 6 month old can of Campbell's cheddar cheese soup. Which we proceeded to warm up. Meanwhile we peeled 3 medium potatos and chopped 'em up to boiling size, and persuaded them to boil, for 15 minutes. Standard procedure. This time we forgot the salt. [Too many close relatives with high blood pressure, probably has broken our habit. No problem, the canned soup has a semilethal dose.]

The average hunk of fresh broccoli also got the standard treatment. Eliminate those ugly little leaves, cut off the ends, slice down the stalks. Into the pressure cooker. Instead of the usual cup of water, we dumped in some cheap white wine, maybe half a cup, and the rest water. It seemed like a good idea at the time, even if probably in vain. Three minutes at full steam. Decidedly dead (soft), appropriate for this recipe. Chopped it up.

Drained the potatoes, chopped them up a bit more just for good measure (half inch size, maybe five eighths). You've heard of parsleyed potatoes? Well, broccoli is green too. So we threw them all together in a burst of imagination. Then we got out a bunch of spices that seemed like they might fit in somewhere. Forgot most of them. Generous salt and pepper, nutmeg did find their way into the cheddar cheese soup warming up on the back burner (no water added). As already noted, the salt we could not stop. The nutmeg came to mind from a spinach recipe. Again the color affinity thing. We added too much naturally. Then mixed the broccoli and potatoes with the over nutmegged cheese soup in a large mixing bowl. To our surprise it tasted pretty good. Maybe you can figure out how much nutmeg to add.

ingredients

1 bunch broccoli
3 medium potatoes
1 can cheddar cheese soup
nutmeg "to taste"
pepper, no salt

instructions

  1. See above. Be prepared to lie about this dish if you serve it to guests. It is quick and tasty in spite of its low brow cuisine level.

notes

  1. WARNING. This recipe bears no resemblance to any previous recipe the team has ever seen, published or perished. As you might have guessed.
  2. The "potato(e?)" in the title has its origins in an infamous mispelling by Reagan's vice president Dan Quale. I guess you had to be there at the time.
brocptcc.htm: 10-jun-2001 [what, ME cook? © 1984 dr bob enterprises]