PSoTD

The recipe, as promised. Look for the movie in a few years.

Verna McCallum's Chicken Tetrazzini recipe

(Makes 4 to 6 servings)

1/4 pound butter
2 tablespoons grated onion
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups chicken or turkey broth
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons dry sherry
1/4 cup grated gruyere or swiss cheese
1/4 pound mushrooms, sliced
1/2 pound thin spaghetti, cooked and rained
2 cups finely sliced cooked chicken
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

Melt half the butter in a skillet; saute the onion five minutes. Blend in the flour. Gradually add the broth, stirring constantly to the boiling point. Mix in the salt, pepper, cream, sherry, and Swiss cheese. Cook over low heat ten minutes, stirring frequently. Taste for seasonings.

Melt the remaining butter in a skillet; saute the mushrooms five minutes, stirring frequently. Add the spaghetti and half the sauce. Mix together lightly. Pour into a buttered casserole. Mix the chicken with the remaining sauce and pour over spaghetti. Sprinkle with the parmesan cheese.

Bake in a 350-degree oven for 30 minutes.

My mom used to make the greatest chicken tetrazzini. It was so good, it was the meal I picked for my birthday dinner about 4 years in a row.

When my wife and I were married back in 1993, one of the things my Mom did is give me the copies of all the recipes for meals she used to make when we were kids. Over our childhood, through trial and error, she built a recipe collection of what three kids, including one that was trying to survive on rolls and meat, would eat, and today I have a copy of that collection.

It had been a few years since I made chicken tetrazzini, but last Friday I made it, and it brought me back to childhood. Seemed just as good as my mom made. Lasted one dinner and one leftovers lunch before it disappeared. Was eaten by our two sometimes food finicky kids.

The recipe itself is a copy of a newspaper clipping from an old old newspaper, most likely the Marion or Muncie Indiana newspapers, since that's the area we lived when chicken tetrazzini hit the scene in our home. The author of the recipe was one Verna McCallum, and so I felt obliged to "google" her and see if there were any other fantastic recipes associated with her on the Internet.

There were 22 listings for Verna. None had recipes. Only one looked like they were about this Verna McCallum, and it was just a name listing. There's a picture with the recipe, and she looks to be in her sixties in the photo, and the photo is from the 1960s... I sat there and thought that this woman most likely has slipped from our earthly bounds without leaving much of a record that she was here publicly findable, at least on Google.

Considering the amount of pleasure I enjoyed as a kid eating chicken tetrazzini, and how much I had just a few days ago doing the same, this seems a bit unfair. Without Verna McCallum, I may have had corndogs or homemade pizza as my birthday dinner when I was growing up. Without Verna McCallum, I may not have been able to to tell (or bore) my kids with my stories about chicken tetrazzini and birthday dinners just last week. And the same with this posting now. And so...

Thanks, Verna McCallum, for the chicken tetrazzini. It is delicious.