Background; planning ahead to Thanksgiving and visiting with my grandfather who lives in an assisted care facility. I haven't seen him in years due to me living overseas and being busy being a chef for the greater part of my life. This year I'm away from work and can make a visit several states over, so Thanksgiving is going down proper and we're getting him out of there and cooking a proper meal for him. I have no problems getting everything in the meal done properly except this casserole.
He has requested an Oyster Casserole as part of the meal. Well, my casserole game is not really up to snuff and I've never had an Oyster Casserole, somehow missed me in life, so I need a little help with the guesswork. Google gives me a basis of some oysters baked in dairy with saltine crumb on top, so that's good and fine, but I know I can do better if I approach this with some philosophy - and I am not referring to applying fine dining or classical French tech to this, I want to make it comforting and spot-on for what he can look forward to. What I really want to do is get it just right and surprise him. He is 90+, grew up in Ohio all his life, went off to WWII, and so forth. I want to know what the regional details for an Oyster Casserole might be for this area, so I'm not really looking a Southern style recipe. I'm seeing creamed corn in some recipes, I'm seeing mushrooms in others. I have some nice corn I bought in Iowa last month on a road trip and shucked and froze that I could use on this.
Is a Bechamel base too heavy for something like this? I'd go to it if I had to just guess, but I get the feeling that something like this has a specific emotional zing to it like the way some people throw Campbell's cream of mushroom and canned beans together for green bean casserole, it has a place in the continuum of comfort foods that might not be replicated by trying to 'elevate' it at all corners.
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