Simple Suppers.

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

If “casserole” still resonates as a term of culinary endearment, then this is a cookbook for you! Perhaps you remember the CorningWare dishes that your grandmother prepared for her church suppers, or the savoury and filling concoctions that hit the spot at those mid-week dinners when you were in junior high thirty years ago. Well, they are back, but with a contemporary twist. Chicken Tortilla Bake (“a saucy casserole with southwestern flair”) contains the requisite can of condensed cream of mushroom soup, but slips in a can of diced green chilies.

This is the salient merit of this spiral-bound volume. It is easy to open to recipes which call for readily available ingredients from the meat and produce counters, augmented sometimes by the contents of cans, all enlivened by seasonings which in grandmother’s time were thought exotic, or not thought of at all. The outcome is healthy food and the opportunity for younger cooks to explore the pleasures of ethnic cooking at a rudimentary but rewarding level. Sicilian Summer Grill, for example, calls for boneless, skinless chicken thighs perked up with seasoned salt and pepper, a polenta roll, cut into eight slices, basil pesto (readily available in the supermarket), feta, Roma tomatoes, and olive oil. The table of contents lists salads (both as sides and as meals in themselves), sides, beef, chicken, lamb, pork, fish, and meatless entrees. For some inexplicable reason desserts, an utterly essential component of grandmother’s simple suppers, have been scuppered here. Recommended.