tuna casserole
A few
years ago, a small group of friends gathered on my front porch for a retro
dinner. On the menu: onion soup dip, tuna casserole, and that orange Jell-O with
shredded carrots and pineapple that everyone’s mom made in the 1960s. I can’t
remember what we had for dessert, but I do remember the guy who had apparently
never had onion soup dip before and asked his wife, most seriously, if she
could get the recipe. With a grin, she said she thought she could manage it. We
also learned that if you make that dip with fat-free sour cream, it’s
abominable.
But in
advance of dinner, one friend said she seriously considered whether or not she
could eat tuna/noodle casserole. Apparently, she had bad memories from
childhood. And that’s still true today—folks either love it or hate it. None of
my family will touch it, but Christian has a good friend who is itching to come
from Dallas for supper, so I’ll make him tuna casserole. And my reluctant
friend? She liked it.
The
casserole touches on a second culinary problem—do you cook with canned soups or
not. Many cooks are purists who claim they would never, ever patronize the
Campbell company; others use those soups in everything. I am somewhere in the
middle, pretty much a from-scratch cook but with several tried-and-true recipes
that call for canned soup. Sometimes I find I get in trouble when I try to
substitute for the canned—in fact, that happened recently with tuna casserole.
So here’s my recipe, a twist on traditional tuna but not too proud to use cream
of mushroom soup:
Tuna
casserole
1 c. white wine
Assorted dried herbs—thyme, parsley,
oregano, summer savory, tarragon, etc. (avoid Mexican spices like cumin); just
throw the spices into the wine
1 small onion, chopped, or three or
four green onions
½ c. celery, diced fine
2 Tbsp. butter
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 7½-oz. can water-packed tuna,
drained
1 c. carb filler of choice,
cooked—noodles or rice
½ c. green peas
1 small can French’s fried onion
rings
Boil wine with herbs until the herbs
turn black (about five minutes). Remove from heat.
Meanwhile sauté onion and celery in
butter. Add to wine, along with soup. Add tuna, drained, or 1 cup diced chicken
or turkey, the carb filler, and green peas for color. If there’s not enough
liquid for your solid ingredients, add more wine. You can also vary the amount
of meat and noodles or rice to suit your taste. Put into casserole dish and top
with canned fried onion rings.
The size casserole dish you use will
depend on how big you make your casserole, but it’s best to have a shallow dish
so that more of the casserole gets fried-onion topping. Also if you’re using a
toaster oven, as I do, you want to keep those onions as far from the top
heating element as possible, because they burn easily. Maybe put them on for
the last ten minutes or so. Bake at 350° until bubbly and onions are brown.
Here's a quickie that I do with tuna
when I don’t want to make a casserole for just me—I fix creamed tuna (it makes
Jordan run from the room screaming). Amounts here are approximate. Put a hunk
of butter (2 Tbsp?) in skillet; sauté onions and celery; sprinkle with flour
(1-2 Tbsp?).
Add liquid, a bit at a time, to make
a smooth white sauce—you can use milk, but I prefer chicken broth (and you
could use cream of mushroom soup and dilute a bit with wine or broth). Add a
glug of white wine. Stir in drained, flaked tuna and green peas. At this point,
you can call it done, or you can add cheese. Grated cheddar is good—stir it in
and let it melt and get cheesy. If you want to top creamed tuna with Parmesan,
put it on toast and run the whole thing under the broiler until you get a nice
brown topping.
Serve over rye toast or, if you want
to get fancy, in puff pastry shells. Enjoy and imagine yourself back in the
sixties. Perhaps it takes people of a certain age to appreciate these recipes.
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