Cry Baby: Taters, Tears, & Teen Rebellion (#111)

 

Our February film this year was Cry Baby. This campy satire comedy pokes fun at the 50's style films where a good girl falls in love with a bad boy.

This film didn't have any big food scenes so I based dinner on a scene early on in the movie when one of the teenager's moms tells her that they're having her favorite dinner that night: potatoes au gratin. Of course, I had to give it my own twist, which I explain in the recipe below.

For dessert, I made a classic cookie from that era known as cry baby cookies. Some people suspect that the cookie may have inspired the name of the movie, but I don't think that has ever been confirmed.

50's Mom Inspired Potatoes Au Gratin Casserole

As I started researching potatoes au gratin, it became pretty clear that it wouldn't work well as a main course. Not in it's original state anyway. Potatoes au gratin is a french dish similar to scalloped potatoes that is typically a side to a meat course. Based on this one short scene, it did seem like Wanda's was making it as the main course and was pretty proud of it.

I decided that I could add a meat element to the dish to make it into a stand alone dish. The obvious choice for this would be diced ham. In that time period, processed meats were very common additions to dishes. I don't eat pork though, so for my dish, I decided on diced beef hotdogs instead. Hotdogs have a similar consistency to ham and felt like a reasonable substitute.

Once I figured out my meat situation, the dish started to come together in my mind. I was no longer viewing this as the classic French dish, but rather how a 50's housewife might reimagine or interpret the dish.

The next substitute would be the cheese. Potatoes au gratin is typically made with gruyere. I couldn't imagine a 50's housewife using that in her dish though. The natural choice would have been cheddar cheese. The problem with cheddar is that it has a very strong flavor and I didn't think it would taste very good in this dish. So, ultimately I went with Colby Jack which is similar to cheddar in many ways but has a more mild flavor profile. 

The last big alteration that I made was to add the bread crumb topping. After deciding to add the meat, it became clear to me that this was becoming a casserole, and no good '50s era casserole is complete without a breadcrumb topping. I made mine with Ritz crackers because it's tasty and easy and it fits the processed food theme that is commonly seen in '50s dishes.

Ingredients:

• Butter (This is used multiple times in this dish. Check the step to see how much each time.)
• 4 or 5 Ball Park bun size beef franks
• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
• approx 3 lbs russet potatoes
• 1/2 lb block Colby Jack cheese
• 2 (10.5 oz) cans of cream of mushroom soup
• 2 cups of whole milk
• 1 cup of heavy cream
• 2 tbsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• approx 2 tsp salt
• approx 1 tsp pepper
• 1 1/2 cups of crushed Ritz crackers (approximately 1.5 sleeves or 45 crackers)

Directions:

1. Slice your hot dogs on a cutting board long ways. Then take those halves and slice them again in half long ways. Once you have your four long quarter pieces, You can shop these up into diced uniform pieces.
2. Saute diced beef franks in a small amount of butter over a medium high heat. Add the paprika. I used smoked paprika, because I thought it would add good flavor to the beef franks. If you decided to use ham or some other processed meat, season it according to taste preference.
   
   
   
3. Once all the diced hot dog pieces are seared well and cooked through, move them to a plate that is lined with paper towels. This is to catch the excess grease and oil from the hot dogs and the butter. Spread them out evenly around the plate. I would also suggest putting a paper towel on top of the hot dog pieces and padding it to catch the moisture on top. Let this plate set aside while you work on the rest of the dish so that the meat has time to cool and dry.
4. Wash and peel your potatoes. Then slice them into thin potatoe chip style slices using a mandoline or similar tool.
5. Russet potatoes have a ton of starch and moisture, so briefly run the slices under some tap water. Do not overwash. The purpose of the step is not to wash off all the starch, just to remove some of the excess.
6. Move the sliced potato to baking sheets lined with paper towels. Put a row of potato slices down over the paper towels and then cover that row with paper towels and place another row of slices. Continue this until every row of potato slices has paper towels both above it and below it. This is to pull the excess moisture from the potato so that it will better absorb the cream from our dish. Allow your potato slices to dry while you work on other elements of the dish.
   
   
   
7. Grate your chesse. Yes, you could have purchased pre-grated cheese, but processed cheese has additives added to it to prevent it from melting during shipping. With this cheese, we want it to melt well, so grating it ourself is going to be the preferred method.
   
   
   
8. Now that you finished most of your prep work, it would be a good time to preheat your oven to 350°F as we start working on the sauce.
9. In a saucepan on low heat, melt 4 tablespoons of butter.
10. Add cream of mushroom, milk, heavy cream, onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper to saucepan and whisk until evenly combined. I never really measure salt and pepper, so go by your taste or instinct there.
    
    
    
11. Butter a 9x13 casserole dish and begin layering your potatoes. Put two single layers of potatoes in the pan so that the one overlaps with the other.
12. Sprinkle about a third of your diced meat over this potato layer.
13. Sprinkle about a third of your cheese over this layer.
14. Pour about a third of your sauce over everything you have so far. Make sure that it gets in all the cracks. You may have to lift the pan up and tilt it around a little bit to make sure the liquid fills all the empty spaces between the potatoes. 
15. Repeat these steps two additional times, to create three layers. In other words, you should have two rows of potatoes, meat, cheese, and sauce in each of the three layers.
16. Make sure that all the potatoes are submerged in the sauce. You may have to take a fork and press down a little bit if any of the potato chips are poking out through the sauce. If they're not submerged in the sauce then they won't absorb all the moisture and they'll be dry hard spots, which you don't want.
    
    
    
17. Cover this dish in aluminum foil and bake for 45 minutes. 
18. While baking, you can move on to the breadcrumbs. Crush about 1 and a half sleeves of Ritz crackers into a bowl. My grocery store sells something called "fresh stacks" which are basically half sleeves. Each one has 15 crackers and makes about a half cup of crumbs, so I used three of these.
19. Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in the microwave. (Do this in a few 10 sec increments to keep the butter from getting too hot or spitting.) Add that butter to your crumbs and stir thoroughly to ensure an even mixture.
20. After the 45 minute cook time is up, remove your baking pan from the oven. Carefully remove the aluminum foil and evenly coat the top with your breadcrumb topping.
21. Return the pan to the oven uncovered for 25 minutes or until the topping appears crispy or toasted.
    
    
    
22. Remove from heat and allow to cool before serving. There is no reason to serve this dish hot. It is fine to serve it warm, but even if it reaches room temperature it is still delicious dish. The cream thickens as it cools, so it also holds together better when it's served at a lower temperature.

Okay, so there's my recipe for the potato au gratin inspired '50s era casserole. I have to say that it came out pretty darn tasty. When I served the dish it was still pretty hot. In hindsight, I should have waited longer and gave it more time to cool. In my opinion it's definitely tastier and easier to eat when it's not hot.

The hot dog bits and the Ritz cracker crumbs were a good addition to this dish. They added some extra flavor and some extra textures. If I hadn't told my guests that there were bits of hot dog in there, they may have very well mistaken them for ham, which is what I was going for. No one flavor really overpowered the others, so the dish felt harmonious. Almost everyone at the table went back for seconds.

Was it the tastiest casserole I've ever made or eaten? No. But it certainly hit the spot and I felt it did a good job representing a '50s style potato casserole dish inspired by potato au gratin.

Effort wise, the most time intensive part if this was the prep work, but even that is not difficult with the right tools. Awhile back, I bought a slicer/grater on Amazon that uses a hand crank. It is much faster and less dangerous than slicing or grating by hand. If you don't already have a tool like this, I would recommend them.

Cry Baby Cookies

Cry baby cookies are not seen in this film or referenced in this film, but they certainly felt like a fitting dish for this film. They date back to Depression era America, but were still a popular cookie in the 50's which is the time period this film is set in. They are a delicious soft cookie with multiple flavor profiles. I found several different recipes for them and ultimately combined a few to make this.

Ingredients: (makes 3 dozen)

• 1/2 cup hot coffee (classic roast)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup Crisco vegetable shortening
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1 large egg
• 2 cups flour (If too runny, you can add a little more)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon 
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 4 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and grease baking sheets.
2. Dissolve baking soda into hot coffee.
3. With whisk attachment on an electric mixer, combine shortening and sugar until fluffy.
4. Add in egg, molasses, and coffee mixture and continue to mix. It will start to get noticably fluffy.
5. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves.
6. Gradually combine flour mixture with the stuff in our mixer. Scrape the side of the bowl on occasion to make sure everything is mixing. When fully combined, your dough will have an appearance and texture similar to creamy peanut butter. If it is too thin, add just a little more flour.
7. Using a table spoon, scoop batter out one spoon full at a time and place on baking sheets. The cookie will flatten as in cooks, so leave a couple inches between each cookie.
   
   
   
8. Bake 12 minutes in oven. Depending on your number of baking sheets, you may have to do this a few times until you are out of batter.
   
   
   
9. Once cookies are removed, let them cool on a wire rack.
10. Time to prepare your lemon glaze. This is made by combining powdered sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla extract in a bowl and stirring until all the lumps of sugar have dissolved onto the icing.
11. Underneath the wire racks that your cookies are cooling on, put some wax paper to catch the mess you are about to make.
12. Over the center of each cookie, gently pour 1 teaspoon of lemon glaze. It will run off the edges and drip onto the wax paper. That is intentional. The dripping of the glaze represents tears.
13. The glaze will harden as it cools, so leave the cookies undisturbed for an hour.
14. After everything has had time to cool, move your cookies to an airtight Tupperware container. If you stack them in multiple rows, put a sheet of wax paper between each row to keep them from sticking. Store at room temperature. Refrigerating is unnecessary and will cause you to lose the original softness of the cookie.

These cookies were a big hit. I was nervous when making the glaze that it would be too sour, but once it was eaten with the cookie, it all balanced out well. If you did want to make your glaze a little less tart, you can substitute one tablespoon of lemon juice for milk.

The flavor of these cookies is similar to gingerbread, but the texture is super soft which makes them a little addictive. They say that the name cry baby cookies comes from kids crying when you don't let them eat one. This seems reasonable. A batch of these cookies would not have lasted long in my house as a kid.

All in all, this was a successful movie night. Everyone enjoyed the dinner and the dessert and it all tied in well with the theme. Other things that I did to fit the theme was have 50's rock and roll playing while guests arrived and dinner was eaten. I also bought glass bottle sodas to have with dinner and keep with the 50's feel. The movie itself was a peculiar one, but it was still really funny. We all had a great time.