We've Only Just Begun

Yesterday, I decided to make a dish for dinner that I have been preparing for a long time. It is called Beef and Bean Casserole. Well, actually I don't know if that is the official name of it or not. I cut this recipe out of a Good Housekeeping or Better Homes and Gardens magazine in the late 70's when cutie and I first got married and have since misplaced the original. That is a shame. The recipe has a great picture of a guy with a large afro style hairdo scooping out a big portion on to a plate with an equally large smile on his face. How could I resist adding this recipe to my list of cheap foods to make when you are just married and have no money?

You are probably wondering how all of this relates to life in Jakarta. As usual, I am going to tell you.

The ingredients are pretty easy to find even in this part of the world. You need ground beef, Kraft BBQ sauce, pork and beans, brown sugar, refrigerator biscuits, and some grated cheddar cheese. The ground beef, Kraft BBQ sauce, brown sugar, and the cheese were no problem. Pork and beans I didn't find, but I did find baked beans and they are pretty much the same thing. No one here sells cans of biscuits so I knew I was going to have to make those from scratch.

Before going to the grocery, I went on line and found a good looking buttermilk biscuit recipe. While shopping for ingredients I discover they don't sell buttermilk here. No problem. I can make my own or substitute plain yogurt instead. I bring the items home and begin making biscuits.

My biscuit recipe calls for self-rising flour. Hmmm. Don't have that, so I go on line to look up what I need to do to make plain flour into self-rising. Got it. I measure out the dry ingredients with the appropriate additions to pimp my flour. The recipe also calls for 10 tablespoons of butter. I pull out the butter I had bought and realize that there are no markings on the side of the stick. It just gives a weight of 100g.

Doggone it! Back to the computer to find out how many grams there are in one tablespoon of butter. Alex Trebek, please note that I can answer "What is 14.19grams," if I ever make it to Jeopardy. Thank goodness I managed to have enough sense to bring a nice kitchen scale that will do either metric or US standard measures. I weigh out 142 grams and cut it in to small pieces to mix with the flour.

As I mentioned before, I have a wet and a dry kitchen. What this means to me is that I can add lots of steps to my pedometer by walking back and forth way too many times to retrieve items to use for preparing my dish. I am sure yesterday I probably walked a mile between looking things up on the computer and walking between kitchens just for this meal. Good thing since I have just weighed out 142 grams of butter to make biscuits.

Also, since most expats are the wrong size to live in this part of the world, the counter tops are a different height than at home. I guess this is why you have a cook. Your back is killing you from leaning over either to work on the counter or to cook on the cook top or to wash dishes for that matter. It is their little insurance policy that you will come to realize it is cheaper to hire someone to do these things than to have back surgery and physical therapy.

I get the biscuits finished that will top my meat and bean mixture and move on. While cooking the meat it suddenly dawns on me that I don't have a casserole dish. Oh, bloody Hell! I finish putting all the meat and bean ingredients together and begin to search for an oven proof substitute. After several attempts, I decide my best bet is a 9 inch Pyrex pie plate.

In to the pie plate goes the mixture. I top it with my homemade biscuits which have been cut in half and placed cut-side down on the meat mixture. I distribute the grated cheese over that and put it in the oven to bake.

The differences between a casserole dish and a 9 inch pie plate make themselves known as the kitchen begins to get kind of smokey about half way through the cooking process. The gooey cheese and some of the meat mixture is dripping over the sides of the pie plate and on to the bottom of the oven. We open doors and windows and turn on a floor fan until my casserole, disguised as a pie, is finished cooking. We put a cookie sheet beneath the pie plate to keep any more mess off the bottom of the oven.

After the timer goes off and the smoke has cleared, we sit down to eat. Oh my. It tastes like home. A heavenly little slice of familiarity even if it was in the wrong size dish.
*No afros were harmed in the preparation of this meal.