Chicken & Rice Casserole

I'm not gonna lie to ya, baking is pretty easy.

For awhile, when my sister and i were living in the same town, we took turns hosting the other on Tuesday nights, which involved dinner & a movie, or Scrubs, or a board game.
There was a short time when we took some of our favorite casserole/hotdish recipes and updated them so they were more in accordance with our current diet.
This is yet another updated version of my dad's famous Chicken & Rice Casserole. When my dad made this it was just chicken & rice & cream of mushroom soup.

Okay well enough trivium & neuroses.

Chop your veggies and put them in a pan like the one pictured below.
I'm not sure the dimensions, but it's rectangular & serves 4-6 people.
We have a couple vacancies in our house and we're courting a potential housemate and having a nice house meal together.
*Update: we totally got her. This dish IS a winner*

Anyway, the veggies are the usual suspects: peas in the pod, broccoli, asparagus and shiitake mushrooms.
You don't need to add a bunch. In fact if you do you could over flow your pan.
Heat makes stuff expand ya know.
See, I even refrained from using all the mushrooms I had.

I also rubbed olive oil all over the pan. I don't know if that matters at all.

Last summer we built an herb spiral and the herbs are kinda going crazy right now, which is awesome.
Here we have the freshest herbs you can get: sage, thyme & tarragon.
And the not as fresh (but still fresh): garlic, basil & serrano.
Finely chop them.
Chop them all!
Yeees. Like that.

Now would also be a good time to season the dish.
Again, the usual suspects: black and white pepper, paprika, turmeric, tamari.
Cumin would also work, but I haven't been too into that lately.
Curry would be pretty good too because of the following step.

So, as some of you know, I generally don't do dairy. But for some reason, when I do something 'dairy-free' this translates in my head to 'vegan.'
I was telling folks this is a vegan chicken & rice casserole. Which it is... except for the chicken & the egg.

The 'dairy-free' part of this 'vegan-except-for-the-chicken-&-egg' dish comes from coconut milk & nutritional (or brewer's) yeast.
I recently got into pasta, not because pasta is inherently good (it's actually not as it turns out), but because there's this place just down Hawthorne, Pasta Works, that makes the best fresh pasta ever.
Growing tired of marinara sauces, I desired the alfredo sauce, but alas, too creamy from dairy.
Anyway, I found this vegan alfredo sauce that is as follows: 1 can coconut milk, 1/4 C nutritional yeast.

Don't use more than 1/4 C nutritional yeast to 1 can coconut milk.
Don't.
It's easy to do, but don't do it. You may think you like nutritional yeast, but you don't like it this much. Stick to the ratio. If anything, go less.
Learn from the mistakes of others.

Okay. Well, enough of that.

Add rice.
I can't remember how much I put in. I think it was 2 C.
I also added an equivalent amount of water, which I feel was unnecessary. I'm sure half that would have worked.
Noted: rice:water = 1:1/2

This is probably also unnecessary, but whatever.
Add an egg.
Beat it first.
I don't know why, I just like throwing an egg into things. I think it somehow affects the structural integrity or something, like it brings all the ingredients together.
But whatever, I don't need to justify my egg usage to you.

Okay now stir all that business up nice & even. Then slip in the chicken fillets.
Trust me, they're in there.

Cover it & Bake it.
Since this isn't in the recipe books, I'm just gonna go with 375 for about 30 or 45 minutes (or so I thought).

So 30 minutes goes by and I check the corner... still a bit liquidy.
45 minutes, still liquidy.
I turn it up to 400 and check in another 15 minutes... still liquidy.
This is getting ridiculous.
I finally just pull it out, it's been in there for an hour, its definitely cooked.

Well, as it turns out, all the stupid liquidy stuff is congregating in the corners, which is the only part I was checking.
Der.
In retrospect, I should have cooked it uncovered after a half hour, which I knew, just kinda didn't think of then.

Let it cool.
Or not.

Serve with beer & garlic bread.
Mmm.

It was pretty good.
I feel there was too much nutritional yeast.
Everybody else liked it (except Bob, he's not that kind of 'vegan').
The only comments were that the chicken was in fillet form rather than diced & evenly distributed, which seems weird to me. My dad always put real chicken parts in there for us to find and rip apart.
At least I used fillets.
To each their own.

So, if you're taking notes on this dish, use less water & cook uncovered for a bit.
Lesson learned.