Family recipes are a funny thing. They straddle a fine line between fond memory, mystery, comfort, and tradition. You grow up enjoying them as a kid but usually not actually preparing them. And then you get to a certain point in adulthood and you yearn to duplicate those family recipes on your own. In my experience, that's when relative disaster strikes. Take, for example, my mom's Million Dollar Spaghetti. Growing up, we had this probably once a week and as a teenager I requested it more frequently. I remember when I got my first apartment in my senior year of college and I asked my mom for the recipe. I was shocked to learn that it was basically an excuse to eat one pound of cream cheese, a cup of heavy cream and a bunch of pasta all in one sitting. Then there was my mom's Raspberry Fool which I have fond memories of in the late spring and early summer. We'd have late dinners outdoors and she would make individual glass cups of these and stick them in the fridge so you could sneak into the kitchen and grab yours whenever the time felt right. About five years ago, I learned it was essentially all heavy cream. Utter deliciousness, but not the light summery creation I'd always thought it was.

Laying out Ingredients

But health concerns aside, family recipes can be questionable in other ways, too. Take Chocolate Jumbles. When I was growing up, around Christmas we'd receive a care package from Hilda--my grandmother's across-the-street neighbor in the tiny town of Ames, NY. I didn't care for the Chocolate Jumbles at first: they're a little on the warmly-spiced side for most kids, I think. But then I came to appreciate their subtle hint of cocoa and cloves, their holey center, and their super soft crumb. They're good with tea, perfect with coffee, kind of nice late at night when you can't sleep. I made them for the first time this past weekend and made them again and again. Because sometimes family recipes just befuddle you. You stare at the old index card and think, why? The instructions seem far too complex, a few of the ingredients seem unnecessary, or you simply can't make out the handwriting that's been smudged and stained after years and years of use. In the case that you bake for a living, you really stare at this particular recipe and think, why?!

As I made them the first time, I tried to think about Hilda at her kitchen table pouring hot water into a shortening-based cookie dough and mixing. Out of all of the ways you could infuse a dough with liquid, this wouldn't be my first choice. So I decreased the amount of water, raised the quantity of spice and used part bread flour in lieu of solely all-purpose flour (this makes for a sturdier dough). The result reminds me of Hilda's jumbles although I'm still confused how she could possibly get from point A to point B using the recipe she gave us. Maybe there's something in that country air or maybe Hilda just has a much softer touch than I do. Regardless, you'll enjoy this adapted version. I'm sure of it. And at the end of the day after swimming in Chocolate Jumble dough, it doesn't really matter that you've become a little frustrated and disillusioned with yet another family recipe, does it? It's fleeting. You keep making those Chocolate Jumbles and reworking them until you get them just right because maybe -- just maybe-- you want to bathe in the memory, mystery, comfort, and tradition once more. If only for an afternoon, anyway.

Food and taste are cyclical in a person's life. A dish that is a hands-down favorite in your childhood may not seem so desirable as an adult. Take scrambled eggs. These were my favorite childhood breakfast, but once I was a teenager I detested their wobbly texture and thought their odor was slightly sulfuric. Then, when I was pregnant, I couldn't seem to eat enough scrambled eggs.

So what does this have to do with tamale pie? Everything. You see tamale pie is one of those dishes many of us loved in our youth, but then either forgot about or hated once we were in our 20s. The whole casserole thing belonged to a time of culinary naiveté from the 70s and 80s, and so we tucked the thought of tamale pie away with deviled eggs and Jell-O.

But now that I'm a mom trying to find new meals for my kids to eat, I have finally come full circle. What seemed unsophisticated a few years ago now seems like a completely legitimate dinner for a family with two kids. There is nothing urbane or refined about a weekday meal crammed in between homework and Girl Scouts and a quick casserole that is full of nutritious ingredients your kids will eat without complaint is the only appeal you need. From Creamy Chicken and Rice Casserole to Cheesy Enchilada Casserole, my weekday meals are relying more and more on one-dish recipes that fall into the category of comfort food and are easy on a kid's tongue. Bring on the casseroles and pass the sour cream!

Here's my Half-the-Meat Tamale Pie recipe. Unlike other similar casseroles, this one uses only a half-pound of meat (either beef or turkey is fine) plus two cups of whole beans. This makes it not only more heart healthy, but also incredibly inexpensive. The entire dinner for four to six people costs about $10 to make and includes fresh vegetables like Anaheim peppers and whole kernels of corn. It's also a dish my children love, and I have to say that although I wouldn't have made this dish in my 20s, I am rather fond of it now.

A steaming plate of enchiladas is one of my favorite meals. I love how the depth of flavor in a good enchilada sauce wakes up the tongue; and then of course there's the added bonus of melted cheese. But the process of making enchiladas is a bit fussy. Baked while sitting rank and file, nestled against each other in a queue, they demand a tidy symmetry. The result is a row of neat and snug packages wrapped in their own corn tortillas, which is lovely on the plate, but unnecessary for a family dinner. Anyone who has gone through the process of making homemade enchiladas knows that filling each individual tortilla can be time consuming and messy; plus traditional enchilada sauce is difficult to make from scratch and it's hard to find a good one in a can or jar. It is for all these reasons that I abandoned making red sauce enchiladas at home and instead converted my recipe into a casserole. Little did I realize how good this dish would be, how inexpensive it would be to make, nor how much my family would love it.

The casserole's innate unruly character seemed like a perfect fit for enchilada's zesty ingredients. I figured I would use many of the same components -- chicken, cheese and a red sauce -- and then crossed my fingers that I would end up with something that was close to enchiladas. Yet as with so much in life, making what seemed a paltry amendment to preparation instructions ended up altering the finished product's essence. With the ingredients now added in a hodgepodge of layers, the spices and flavors were given the freedom to intermingle while chilies, sour cream and cheese were at liberty to melt into each other. And while conventional enchilada sauces are made up of dried chilies, I felt that the freewheeling nature of the casserole gave me license to be a bit more innovative. Okay, fine, I only added in tomatoes as a sauce base, but I never would have done this if I'd been making old-school enchiladas. When all was said and done, and I removed that bubbling cheesy dish from the oven, I found that enchilada casserole tastes even more luxurious than its authentic cousin.

As with enchiladas, this casserole is full of southwestern ingredients. Fresh Anaheim chili peppers cooked with chicken (or vegetables), onions, tomatoes, cumin, and Mexican oregano, not to mention a nice dose of chili powder, provides the satisfying Mexican flavors you expect but also a little more. You can also add in a jalapeno for some heat. If you want to keep this dish meat-free, just use roasted butternut or acorn squash instead of chicken (and savor the sweet earthy taste of those vegetables against the mildly picante flavors of the sauce).

Making the filling for this one-dish meal is a breeze, but assembling it is even easier. After toasting the tortillas a bit in a pan, you just layer half of them in a casserole dish, top with half the filling, some cheese and sour cream, and then add on another layer. That's it.

So if you love enchiladas, but aren't crazy about making them; or if you simply crave an easy-to-make hearty one-dish meal that will please your entire family, here is my recipe for Cheesy Enchilada Casserole. The main recipe uses chicken but I've also included a vegetarian alternative that uses butternut or acorn squash at the end. Both are great choices for an easy and hearty dinner at home.

Cheesy Chicken Enchilada Casserole

Makes: one 9 x 13 casserole

Ingredients:

12 corn tortillas
5 chicken thighs (or two cups leftover chicken)
½ cup chicken stock or water
2 large Anaheim peppers chopped
½ large onion chopped
1 Tbsp plus ½ tsp Ancho or Chipotle chili powder (regular chili powder can be subbed in, but the Ancho and Chipotle are so good they're worth seeking out)
1 tsp cumin
1 Tbsp Mexican oregano (or regular)
1 15 oz can diced tomatoes
Salt and pepper to taste
2/3 cup sour cream
¼ cup milk
1 cup shredded Monterey jack, Colby or cheddar cheese (use 1 ½ cups if not using Cotijo)
½ cup Cotijo cheese (optional)
1 Tbsp lime juice
¼ cup chopped cilantro (optional)
1 Tbsp corn or vegetable oil (or enough to thinly coat the bottom of a large pan)

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. If using fresh chicken, place thighs in a pan, sprinkle with salt, pepper and about ½ tsp chili powder and then cover with chicken stock or water. Cook covered for 7-10 minutes, turning over after about 4 minutes. Simmer until cooked through and then remove both chicken and broth from the pan to cool. Shred chicken and keep the broth in a separate dish.

3. Heat the same pan (now empty) to medium heat and then add in the oil, chopped Anaheim peppers and onions. If using jalapeno, add now. Sauté for 10 minutes.

4. Add in the rest of your chili powder plus your cumin and oregano. Be sure to crush the oregano in your hand first (as this releases the flavors more thoroughly into the dish). Add salt and pepper to taste.

5. Add in your shredded chicken (if using chopped leftover chicken add in now), broth, and tomatoes and stir until everything is thoroughly mixed in. Taste and then add more salt if needed. Simmer for 15 - 20 minutes on low heat.

6. Heat a medium pan (I like to use cast iron) to warm up your tortillas. I use medium high heat. Add in a little oil (must enough to barely cover the bottom of the pan) and fry each tortilla until warmed through and slightly crisp. Set aside on a plate.

7. Mix the cilantro and lime juice into your filling and stir. Taste one more time to see if you need to add any salt or pepper and then remove from heat.

8. Mix the milk into your sour cream (whisking to combine) and then set up a workspace with your 9 x 13" pan (which you should spray or line with oil), tortillas, grated cheeses, and filling.

9. Using a ladle, scoop mostly sauce (i.e., not much meat or vegetables) into the bottom of the casserole dish and then lay 6 of your heated tortillas into the bottom of the pan. Top with half your filling followed by drizzling on half your sour cream (making sure you even distribute). Set half your cheese on top of that and then repeat by laying on the remaining tortillas, filling, sour cream and cheeses.

10. Set dish in the oven for about 30 minutes (25 if using a convection oven) or until the entire casserole is warmed through and the cheese is bubbly.

11. Serve and enjoy.

Cheesy Squash Enchilada Casserole Variation
Follow the above instructions with the following alteration:

1. Instead of cooking the chicken in step 1, roast your peeled and chopped squash in the oven with some olive oil and salt until al dente.

2. In step 5 leave out the chicken (obviously) and add in ½ cup vegetable broth instead. Also, do not add in your squash yet as you don't want to overcook it. Instead just simmer your other vegetables in the tomatoes and broth.

3. Add your cubed and roasted squash in step 7.

When I was in college, in the dark days before email and Facebook, my roommates and I passed our time with more mundane matters. Like food. From Juli, I learned about Japanese-style curry. Rie taught me how to blanche green beans perfectly, while Ed opened my palate to an entire pantheon of slow-simmered soups. Pierrette's trick with tuna and egg salad--grating onion into the mayonnaise--still perks up my sandwiches.

From Maria, though, I learned the most important lessons: cooking with my senses.

While I watched, Maria made tortillas with handfuls of flour and finger-lengths of shortening. Growing up in Texas, she had to wake up early every morning to make the family's tortillas, forty on an average day and maybe a hundred or so for special Sundays. She grabbed an empty wine bottle whenever she needed to roll out dough, and from only two pans she made incredible feasts for our house. None of us would admit to being homesick, but listening to Maria talk about her food and then eating her meals made all of us feel like we actually belonged in that drafty, tumble-down, New England house.

I don't have any of her recipes, because she never wrote them down, but like stories and memories, I can recite them just as she did.

"In San Antonio, where my family lives, you can find bags of masa dough in the markets. My mother doesn't need to make her own anymore. We use Crisco now, but if you want, you can use lard or butter. Even oil. But I would never use oil. Why make tamales with oil? If you don't have chicken stock, some water from the tap is good. Just remember to add salt then."

"Be sure to open the middle of the husks when you soak them and put a plate on top, so they can get wet equally. Save the biggest ones for wrapping. The smaller ones, just tear like this into ribbons for tying."

"Mix together a six handfuls of masa, two handfuls of Crisco, the same amount of stock and some salt. Blend them together really well. We use a mixer at home. You can tell when you have the right combination when a little ball of the dough floats in water."

"You can fill them with anything really. We use pork that my mother cooks, but here at school I put all kinds of things in them. Today, I took some of the sweet potatoes from the cafeteria." [In the photo, you can see a dollop of chipotle sauce that I now like to add to my sweet potato tamales, plus a sprinkling of kosher salt. After sweet potatoes or yams are roasted whole, their peels slip right off; mash with a fork.]

"Spread a little bit of the dough on the corn leaf, enough to cover a third of it. When you put the filling on, be sure to leave a little of the dough peeking around the edges, so that it will close up well." [In this recent version, I topped the sweet potatoes with some grated pepper jack cheese tossed with sliced scallions.]

"Fold the leaf in thirds, like a letter, then bend up the end. Tie it, if you want. Or, if you are making a lot, you can just put them down close together and they will keep each other closed. You need to steam them for a long time, longer than you really want. Open one and try it to see if it's done. They like it if you put a towel over them while they steam. [Chinese bamboo or metal stackable steamers are perfect for steaming tamales in single layers. Small tamales require 40 minutes and larger ones up to 1 1/2 or 2 hours to cook through.]

Cassie Clemmons, 1942

I've always loved celebrity cooking stories. Maybe it's because they're proof that the starlets actually eat, or maybe it's because it tickles me to think of them puttering around a kitchen with knives and saucepans just like us. Not that long ago, I hit a gold mine when I discovered Frank DeCaro's library of celebrity recipes and I've spent hours paging through recipe contributions by Debbie Reynolds, Ida Lupino, and J. Edgar Hoover. (I'm sure Rock Hudson's cannoli is quite tasty.)

Growing up, I heard celebrity cooking stories from my Grandma and Grandpa Clemmons. Both of them worked and played in Hollywood and both of them loved to cook. Grandma, who once won a Charleston dance contest with William Bendix and was presented a string of pearls by judge Bette Davis, was a fashion sequence model at MGM, appearing briefly in The Women, The Great Ziegfield, and Dracula. Grandpa had studied architecture at University of Michigan but made his real career out of being a "funny man." He was a gag writer for Bing Crosby's radio show and later a script writer and storyman for Walt Disney, listing The Jungle Book, Robin Hood, The Aristocats, The Rescuers, and The Fox and the Hound among his credits.

My mother still recalls the annual holiday dinner parties thrown at their house in Glendale, where the Clemmons family hosted friends and neighbors who didn't have anywhere to go for the holidays. (Unlike today, when we have to deal with "busiest travel day" of the year, people back then just didn't hop on a plane to visit family every time a holiday popped up.) Some of the regulars at these raucous parties included Bill Morrow (Bing Crosby and Jack Benny's head writer) and his various girlfriends, including actress Pat Dane, a boxer named "Society Kid" Hogan, and Bing Crosby himself.

The food was a potluck affair with the guests bringing their favorite dishes and my grandmother taking care of the main course. A few Christmases ago, my mother put together a family cookbook for my two sisters and me and the three of us now have a sampling of some of these recipes as well as the stories. The recipes are, of course, very retro with lots of sour cream and mayonnaise. Clogged arteries aside, however, the recipes are absolute gems.

My favorite story in The Family Moveable Feast is Grandma experiencing a Julia Child moment. While my 80-year-old Great Grandma Mimi entertained the guests by doing the Cakewalk with her daughter Anita at the piano, Grandma was in the kitchen taking care of that year's roast turkey and Bill Morrow was in the kitchen keeping her company and feeding her cocktails. Ready to serve, the big bird was nestled on a platter when it slipped off and plummeted to the floor with a rather juicy smack. Grandma looked at Bill and Bill looked at Grandma. Grandma picked up the bird, brushed it off, and served it and Bill kept his mouth shut.

No one but wedding buffets seem to use chafing dishes any more. I have a lovely chafing dish that was a wedding present, but I'm afraid to take it out and see how tarnished it's become. However, if you do have a chafing dish you're not afraid to use or polish this Thanksgiving, here is one of the more decadent recipes in my family's cookbook.

Chafing Dish Mushrooms

3 pounds fresh mushrooms
1 1/2 cup Amontillado sherry
1/2 cup water
1/2 pound butter
1 fresh bay leaf
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried tarragon
1 teaspoon dried dill seed
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 pint sour cream

1. Using a damp paper towel, brush off the mushrooms and trim the ends. Put the mushrooms in a large pot and add all the ingredients, except the sour cream.

2. Cook over medium heat for thirty minutes and until most of the liquid has reduced. Fold in the sour cream and serve in a polished, elegant chafing dish.