Re-imagining the tuna casserole—and a bit of fiction

 

As you know if you read “Judy’s Stew” online, I’m taking a course on the culinary cozy mystery. Today’s assignment was to take one dish and describe it in terms of all five senses. It’s been along time since I shared my tuna casserole recipe—don’t groan, please—so I decided to focus on it. I thought for fun in this blog, I’d repeat that scene from Irene Keeps a Secret, the as yet unwritten third entry in my Irene in Chicago Culinary Mysteries series. The recipe is also attached. Henny is preparing to fix tuna casserole for one segment of her TV show, “Recipes from My Mom’s Kitchen.”

As I unpacked the groceries I’d brought and slipped the pre-made casserole in the oven, Bob, the station manager, walked by. “Hey, Henny, watcha cooking today?”

“Tuna casserole,” I replied, my back to him as I worked. I knew what was coming next and mentally got ready for his objection. Bob’s idea of comfort food was probably a Big Mac.

“Tuna casserole!” He exploded. “Henny, we all had to eat enough of that as kids. Nobody eats it anymore. I told you, now that we’re national, you gotta ramp up your act.”

“I’m doing retro recipes, remember? Last week I even did a jellied salad—well, okay it was gazpacho—but it got raves. And national bought the show with the title, ‘Recipes from My Mom’s Kitchen.’ This is from my mom’s kitchen.”

He shrugged and walked on, but not before he muttered something about not blaming him if my ratings tanked.

I turned back to my groceries—a can of tuna, a can of mushroom soup, a pre-measured cup of wine, a small baggie with assorted herbs, some chopped celery and green onions. The pre-cooked noodles bothered me some. I hoped they wouldn’t clump when I tried to use them.

As I worked, memory took me back to Texas. On chilly nights, Dad lit a fire in the fireplace, and we ate dinner camped around it, sitting on the floor or a footstool or whatever was handy. I could almost see the flames and feel their warmth, hear them crackle, smell the piñon wood Dad insisted on. Tuna casserole was a family favorite for those Sunday night suppers by the fire, and as I stood there in that dingy TV studio I thought about Mom’s casserole—the crispness of the fried-onion topping against the creaminess of the noodles and tuna, with an occasional pop when you came to a green pea or the crunch of a bite of celery. I was suddenly hungry, and as I picked up the tuna and soup cans to open, I only hoped my casserole would taste as good as Mom’s. Patrick would be the taste tester tonight at supper, but, alas, no cheering fire.

Tuna casserole re-imagined

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

½ c. celery, diced

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 this 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. A shallow dish means more of the casserole gets fried onion topping. Bake at 350° until bubbly and onions are brown.

Irene in Danger, second in the series, is now available from Amazon in paperback of Kindle editions: Irene in Danger: An Irene in Chicago Culinary Mystery - Kindle edition by Alter, Judy. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

 

Down and dirty, quick and easy

Thanks to mystery author Debra Goldstein for a recipe that caught my imagination, although I must say not in a good way. Making a guest appearance on the blog, Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen (August 16), she shared her recipe for Jell-O in a Can. Now Debra will tell you she does not cook, and she’s created a main character, Sarah Blair (even has her own series) who’s afraid to be in the kitchen. So here’s what you need for Jell-O in a Can:

1 20 oz. can sliced pineapple

1 3 oz. package Jell-O gelatin, flavor of your choice

1 cup boiling water

Open pineapple and drain but leave slices in the can. Separately mix gelatin into boiling water. Let is cool a bit and then pour into the can. Chill until set. To get it out in one piece (a good trick), run a knife around the inside and coax it onto a platter, like you would a can of jellied cranberry sauce (another thing on my never-never list). Slice between pineapple rings and arrange attractively on the platter. The beauty of it is, of course, that it’s quick and easy.

And sometimes you need quick and easy, no matter how much  you like to cook. Here are a couple of my favorites:

            Chili-cheese dip: Mix one 15-oz. can Wolf chili without beans with 16 oz. of Velveeta, cubed. Throw it in the crockpot until the cheese melts. Stir. Serve warm with tortilla chips.

Want to get fancy? Turn it into what I call Colin’s queso after one of my sons. Brown a lb. each of ground beef and pork sausage, crumbling it as it browns. Put in the crockpot and stir in one can cream of mushroom soup, one 16 oz. jar Pace Picante sauce and that cubed lb. of Velveeta. Stir when cheese melts and serve warm with tortilla chips. I used to put chips in a bowl, pour the queso over it, and tell my kids it was supper.

Onion soup-sour cream dip: is there anyone in the world who doesn’t know how to do this? But maybe you’ve forgotten about it because it’s so retro. Simply mix one pack onion soup dip with one pint sour cream (do not use low-fat—that’s a disaster). I swear one night I watched a friend gobble this down and turn to his wife to ask, “Can you get the recipe for this?” She smiled and said she thought she could figure it out.

Cream cheese-crab spread: Arrange a block of cream cheese on lettuce; splurge and open a can of flaked crab meat; douse it all with bottled cocktail sauce. Serve with crackers. Messy but good.

And here are a couple ideas I cribbed from responses to Debra’s column:

Tortilla snacks: Lay out tortilla chips on a cookie sheet; top each with a small slice of cheddar and then a slice of pickled jalapeno. Broil about three minutes.

In the spirit of “Not everything is an appetizer”:

Fruit cocktail pudding: Drain a 15 oz. can of fruit cocktail (yes, it’s still on the market) and a can of mandarin oranges; Mix in bowl and stir in one dry packet of instant vanilla pudding. Chill and serve. (The retro cookbook From Calf Fries to Caviar has several fruit salad recipes that use Jell-O instant pudding mix that way.)

Pumpkin dessert dip: Mix one 15 oz. can pumpkin puree with one 8 oz. container of creamy Cool Whip. Serve with apple slices and gingersnaps for dipping. Want to get fancy? Put a bit of cinnamon in it.

Want more retro quick-and-easy recipes? Read Debra’s favorite cookbook, Peg Bracken’s I Hate to Cook Book (check out her Lazy Day Beef Stew among other goodies). Or read one of Poppy Cannon’s books like The New Can Opener Cookbook  or Poppy Cannon’s all-time, no-time, any-time cookbook.

Want to relax and read while the crockpot cooks supper? Check out the Sarah Blair series: One Taste Too Many, Two Bites Too Many, and the new one, Three Treats Too Many.

Eating Locally

Please welcome my guest, locavore Edith Maxwell. Her Local Foods Mystery series (Kensington Publishing) lets her relive her days as an organic farmer in Massachusetts, although she never had a murder in the greenhouse. A fourth-generation Californian, she has also published short stories of murderous revenge, most recently in Best New England Crime Stories 2014: Stone Cold (Level Best Books, 2013) and  Fish Nets (Wildside, 2013).

 

Edith’s alter-ego Tace Baker writes the Speaking of Mystery series, which features Quaker linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau (Barking Rain Press). Edith is a long-time Quaker and holds a long-unused doctorate in linguistics. The second in the series, Bluffing is Murder, releases in November, 2014.

 

A mother and former technical writer, Edith is a fourth-generation Californian but lives north of Boston in an antique house with her beau and three cats. She blogs every weekday with the other Wicked Cozy Authors, and you can also find her at @edithmaxwell, on Facebook, and at www.edithmaxwell.com

 

****

  

Thanks for letting me contribute to Potluck with Judy!

 

I write a local foods mystery series, and the books follow organic farmer Cam Flaherty through the vagaries of growing and selling locally. Most of her farm customers are eager to make local foods as much of their diet as they can.

 

Traditionally, of course, everybody ate local. If it didn’t grow in your region, you didn’t have access to it. New Englanders didn’t eat oranges and southern Californians didn’t eat apples. And if a crop could be harvested only in June and it was January, you still didn’t have access to it unless you had canned it or stored it in the root cellar. Slowly, with transcontinental transport systems, like trains and trucks, we started being able to buy anything we wanted any time of the year we wanted it. Now, of course, you can get grapes from Chile, clementines from Morocco, shrimp from Thailand.

 

These days more and more folks are interested in eating primarily foods that come from within, say, a fifty- or hundred-mile radius of where they live. Barbara Kingsolver’s non-fiction book, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, describes the story of her family doing exactly that in Tennessee (with one exception for each person: Coffee! Chocolate! Olive oil!). They belong to a local farm-share program like Cam’s, they shop at the weekly farmers’ market. They even seek out locally brewed wines and beers. They are locavores.

 

I love this idea, although I don’t love eating sagging root crops out of storage in March or not being able to have some fresh citrus fruits in December. But I do try to use as many local crops as possible, and several local farms in my area have been growing fresh greens all winter long in high tunnels (greenhouses).

 

The second book in my series, ‘Til Dirt Do Us Part, came out at the end of May (Kensington Publishing, 2013). It starts at a fall Farm-to-Table dinner, with a local chef cooking Cam’s produce in her barn and a bunch of guests eating under a big rented tent on the farm. Days are getting short and the mood at the dinner is unseasonably chilly.

 

When one of the guests turns up dead on a neighboring farm the next day, even an amateur detective like Cam can figure out that one of the resident locavores went loco – at least temporarily – and settled a score with the victim. The closer she gets to weeding out the culprit, the more Cam feels like someone is out to cut her harvest short. But to keep her own body out of the compost pile, she has to wrap this case up quickly. A subplot features rescue chickens, which Cam finds both delightful and problematic, but at least she’ll have local eggs to sell.

 

I hosted a Labor Day cookout last fall and was pleased that I could present my guests with all kinds of locally based dishes. And doubly pleased that nobody turned up dead the next day!

 

One of the dishes I served was one I call Fall Locavore Orzo. Use fresh local ingredients wherever possible. We don’t grow wheat in New England, so the pasta is never going to be local!

 

Ingredients:

½ box orzo

2 T good olive oil

1 pound washed and drained kale leaves stripped off stems, cut into ribbons

2 cloves garlic, minced

½ lb green beans, cut into inch-long pieces

1 handful fresh basil, cut into ribbons

1 T. rice wine vinegar

bottled hot sauce

 

Directions:

1. Cook orzo according to directions on box until al dente, then rinse in cool water and drain. Transfer to medium serving bowl.
2. Heat oil in a sauté pan over medium heat.
3. Sauté the beans and kale in the oil until tender.
4. Add the garlic and sauté one more minute. Do not let brown.
5. Remove from heat and add vegetables to the orzo.
6. Add basil, salt and pepper to taste, and a shake of hot sauce.
7. Add 1 T. vinegar and toss all. Add more oil or vinegar to taste.
8. Serve at room temperature.

 

Good as a side dish. To make into a main course salad, add cubed feta cheese or some diced ham or chicken. Can also serve hot if you omit the vinegar.

 

Readers, what’s your favorite local food? Or the one you most like to read about?

 

 

 

 

Salade Nicoise

 

 

A guest post by Edith Maxwell,

author of A Tine to Die

 

 

 

In A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die (Kensington Publishing, 2013), former software engineer Cam Flaherty grows organic vegetables on her farm in northeastern Massachusetts. She sells them to the local foods enthusiasts who belong to her farm-share program as well as to a tall intense chef. What she didn't plan on was encountering locally sourced murder, too.

 “With an insider's look at organic farming and a loyal, persistent heroine, Maxwell offers a series that cozy mystery fans will root for.” Lucy Burdette, author of the Key West Food Critic series.

 Summer is a perfect time to make this scaled-down version of Salade Nicoise. It skips the tuna and the potatoes but is a great light meal accompanied by a loaf of sourdough and a glass of chilled Pinot Grigio.

Tomato-Bean Salad with Eggs

 Ingredients

For salad:

2 lbs freshly picked slim green beans

6 eggs, hard boiled

Four medium size fresh tomatoes

2-3 T capers

1/2 c fresh parsley, minced

 

For dressing:

2 strips of fresh lemon peel, 1 by 2 1/2 inches each

1/4 t salt, plus more, if needed

1/2 T Dijon-type prepared mustard

1 to 2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/2 c high-quality olive oil

Freshly ground pepper

 1.    Wash and trim the beans. Cut into two-inch pieces. Steam lightly until bright green and then chill in ice water. Drain and dry in a dish towel.

2.    Cut the tomatoes into quarters.

3.    Peel the eggs and carefully cut in half lengthwise.

4.    Lay the beans in a shallow serving dish. Intersperse the tomatoes and eggs, cut side up, in an artful way.

5.    Mince the lemon peel very finely with the salt, scrape it into the mortar or bowl, and mash into a fine paste with the pestle or spoon.

6.    Beat in the mustard and 1 tablespoon of the lemon juice; when thoroughly blended start beating in the oil by droplets to make a homogeneous sauce—easier when done with a small electric mixer.

7.    Beat in droplets more lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste.

8.    Pour the dressing over the salad.

9.    Sprinkle capers and parsley on top and add freshly ground pepper.

10. Serve at room temperature or chill if not serving soon.

 Locavore Edith Maxwell's A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die in the Local Foods Mystery series (Kensington Publishing, 2013) lets her relive her days as an organic farmer in Massachusetts, although murder in the greenhouse is new. A fourth-generation Californian, she has also published short stories of murderous revenge, most recently in the Fish Nets and Thin Ice anthologies.

Edith Maxwell's alter-ego Tace Baker authored Speaking of Murder, which features Quaker linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau and campus intrigue after her sexy star student is killed (Barking Rain Press, 2012). Edith is a long-time Quaker and holds a long-unused doctorate in linguistics.

A mother and former technical writer, Edith lives north of Boston in an antique house with her beau and three cats. You can find her at @edithmaxwell, on Facebook, and at www.edithmaxwell.com