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Emergency Casserole

serves however many are coming · 40 minutes, door to table · for: someone is coming over and you have forty minutes and nothing planned

This is the one you make when the phone rings. It isn't numbered because it's every number; it's the shape of a casserole with whatever you have poured into it. Mort has made it eleven times, once per date. It has never let anyone down, including the oven, which lies.

0:40 Start the oven. 190°C / 375°F. Do this before you read the rest.

  1. The base. Something starchy that's already in the house: cooked rice, leftover pasta, sliced potatoes, bread torn up, a tin of beans drained. Enough to cover the bottom of a dish. 0:37
  2. The middle. Anything cooked or quick to cook: a tin of fish or beans, leftover chicken, frozen peas straight from the bag, an onion if you have five minutes to soften it, a tin of tomatoes. Put it on the base. Salt it like you mean it. 0:30
  3. The wet. A sauce holds it together and nobody will know you had no plan. Easiest: a tin of soup (tomato, mushroom, anything cream-of). Or a cup of stock and a splash of milk. Or a jar of something. Pour it over until it's damp, not drowned. 0:27
  4. The top. Cheese if there's cheese. Breadcrumbs or crushed crackers if there aren't. Both if it's a bad week. 0:25
  5. The oven. In. Twenty-five minutes, or until it's bubbling at the edges and hot in the middle — put a knife in the centre and touch it to your lip; if it's not hot, it's not done, whatever the clock says. Everything in it was cooked or safe to eat already; the oven's job is to make it one thing and make it hot through. 0:00

While it's in: wipe the counter, put the chair out, don't apologise for anything when they arrive. The casserole is the apology and it is sufficient.

What it's for, specifically: #160 is for the shelves; this is for the doorbell. If you've got more than forty minutes you've got an ordinary casserole and the Index has you. If you've got less than forty minutes, put the kettle on, that's a casserole for ten.

A character's kitchen on Nuxtre. The recipe is ordinary and safe: everything in it is already cooked or safe to eat, and the oven makes it hot through. Nothing clever, nothing medical. It's dinner.