FrDrDr Cooks Dinner

Ingredients:
10-ounce package of frozen chopped broccoli
4 cups cooked, deboned, diced chicken

2 10 3/4-ounce cans of cream of chicken soup, undiluted

1/2 cup mayonnaise 

4-ounce can of sliced mushrooms

1/4 tsp curry powder

3 tbsp sherry

3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:

1.  Choose a "light" movie to watch while cooking, like I'm Thinking of Ending Things, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, or my choice, Effie Gray. First mistake.

2. Edit the recipe: 1/2 cup mayo? Not in my casserole. Mushrooms? Dear Husband would pick them out, so omit. There's no carb: decide to add 2 cups rotini, cooked al dente.

3. Put the pasta on to boil. Grease a 9x13-inch casserole dish.

4. Start chopping 2 lbs of chicken breasts, which are not completely thawed = frozen fingers. Notice that the chicken should be diced: cut every piece in half. [Editor's Note: This was either the second mistake or the saving grace.]

5. Drain pasta and layer in bottom of dish. Add chicken. Realize broccoli was supposed to be layered next and decide you will just mix everything up when you're done.

6. Empty 1 can of soup into a bowl. Add what amounts to an "American" amount of curry (it smells delicious but is ultimately undetectable in the final product). Empty other can of soup.

7. Google "alternatives to cooking sherry." Give up and use 3 tbsp water with "some" chicken bouillon. 

8. Add 1/2 cup of shredded cheese and mix. DH bought mozzarella, but who can tell the difference? Not FrDrDr. Pour over casserole contents and stir. Top with enough cheese (at least 1/2 cup, maybe more).

9. Leave in fridge for DH to put in oven while you are ice skating with colleagues. Except the first-come, first-served tickets at the outdoor public rink sold out an hour and 15 minutes before the ice time, so take a damp but nice walk through the park instead and get home early.

10. Baking instructions on handwritten recipe card: Bake, covered, at 350 for 40 minutes and uncovered for 20 minutes. Decide the oven has been underperforming recently, so cover and bake at 400. Meanwhile, get a bad feeling about the chicken, re-read the recipe, and realize you never cooked the chicken.

11. After an hour, remove the casserole from the oven and fish some chicken from its depths: pink and raw. Put back in oven and send DH to Wendy's for dinner. The situation calls for a small chocolate frosty.

12. After 2 hours, remove the casserole from the oven and look for chicken: every piece you can find is white and cooked through. Leave to cool on the counter until bedtime, then cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

13. Lucky 13! After re-heating in the microwave, the chicken and broccoli casserole is edible. It is somewhat more set than it might otherwise have been, and it needs salt and more curry powder, but at least a week's worth of dinners has been saved. I would have been very sorry to have to throw out all that food if the chicken hadn't cooked.

If you enjoyed this recipe, consider the original FrDrDr cooking adventure, the first and only time I have ever made green bean casserole, and a recent experiment with cauliflower and cabbage that turned out better than we could have thought. Do you have any cooking fails with happy endings?