Can-free Tuna Casserole

A few months ago I shared my absolutely delicious recipe for Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas that are made without the dreaded “can-a-soup”. Trust me, make it once, and you’ll never go back.

Now here’s another can-free recipe, this time for a regularly-mocked standby dinner. Tuna Noodle Casserole. It doesn’t take any more time than the canny recipe, you can make the sauce in the time it takes to bring the water to a boil and cook the noodles. OK, it’s not totally can-free unless you make your own chicken broth, but at least it’s “can-a-soup”-free.

And it’s good.

Really, really good.

Can-free Tuna Noodle Casserole

1 pkg egg noodles
2 T Butter
2 T oil
1/2 onion, chopped
mushrooms, sliced (quantity depends on how much you like mushrooms)
1/2 c flour
Salt & Pepper
2 c chicken broth
1/2 c cream
1 T Worcestershire sauce
2 cans tuna (I like the tuna in oil…it just tastes better)
3 oz cheddar cheese, cubed + 1 oz, grated
frozen green peas (again, quantity depends on how much you like peas – substitute a different veggie if you don’t like ‘em at all)
leftover potato chips or bread crumbs

Cook egg noodles as directed on package.
Melt oil & butter together. Saute onion & mushroom until onions are translucent and mushrooms are golden brown. Season with salt & pepper. Mix in flour. Add chicken broth. Cook, stirring often until thickened. Add cream and Worcestershire sauce. Cook until thickened again.

Mix together drained noodles, sauce, tuna, peas and cubed cheddar. Put into a casserole dish. Top with grated cheddar mixed with potato chips or bread crumbs.

Bake at 375 until cheese is melted and casserole is hot.

Enjoy!

Serving Sizes

On a regular basis, I cook for seven people. Four adults, two teenagers and an 11-year-old who almost doesn’t count because he doesn’t like to eat things that aren’t cereal. So when I cook dinner, its important that I make enough for dinner. And if I’m lucky, there’ll be enough leftover for my lunch the next day.

So when I make a recipe I usually aim for 6-8 servings. That’s a fairly safe number for us. Usually.

The other day, after watching the Throwdown with Bobby Flay Arroz con Pollo episode, I decided to make Bobby’s Adobo Seasoned Chicken and Rice. I was almost scared away by the 27 ingredients. Seriously Bobby? 27 ingredients? Do you know how much concentration it takes to not lose your place in a list of 27 ingredients? We don’t all have two sous chefs!

Anyways…the recipe says it serves 4. I should have known it was lying. I should have thought it through. But I had just gotten home from work. I was tired and my brain had already gone through it’s shut down procedure. And I was much more worried about how much turmeric I had because that’s not a spice I keep close track of.

When I saw that it called for 4 chicken thighs AND 4 chicken breasts, I should have known. Then the 3 cups of rice should have clued me in. But I blindly followed along. Used 2 whole cut-up chickens (they were small birds) and 6 cups of rice. And it made enough for 2 whole meals AND a leftover lunch.

It was good…next time I may have to find a way to kick up the flavor of the chicken some, but the flavors were all really good. I must admit that I only used 26 ingredients. I didn’t know how green olives would go over as an ingredient, so I skipped them. But otherwise, it was really good. Which is a good thing when it makes as much as it did! For you, I’ll give you the “4 serving” sized recipe.

But consider yourself warned.

Adobo Seasoned Chicken and Rice
Recipe courtesy Bobby Flay, 2008 (www.foodnetwork.com)

Mix together:
2 T kosher salt
2 t granulated garlic
1 t granulated onion
1 t paprika
2 t freshly ground black pepper
2 t ground turmeric
1 T finely chopped fresh oregano leaves (I used 1 t dried oregano)

Season both sides of chicken with above spice mixture.
Heat:
3 T olive oil
in a large Dutch oven over high heat. Place chicken in oil skin-side down, in batches, in necessary, and saute until golden brown. Turn the chicken over and cook until the second side is golden brown.
Transfer the chicken into a separate pot with all cooking juices, cover and alow to cook through over medium heat. Keep warm.

Place the browning pan back over high heat, add:
2 T olive oil
1 large Spanish onion, finely diced
1 medium green bell pepper, finely diced
1 medium red bell pepper, finely diced
Cook until soft.

Add:
About 1/3 c tomato powder or 1-2 plum tomatoes, seeded and finely diced (I used 2 T tomato paste)
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Cook for 1 minute.

Add:
3 cups long-grain rice
Stir to coat the rice in the onion mixture, and cook for 1 minute. Then add:
4 3/4 c chicken stock
1 bay leaf
Salt & pepper
Bring to a boil. Stir well, cover, reduce heat to medium and cook for 10 minutes.

Add:
1 c frozen peas (not thawed)
Cover and continue cooking until rice is tender. (About 8 minutes)

Remove pot from heat and let sit 5 minutes covered. Remove the lid, fluff the rice and gently fold in:
3/4 c pimento stuffed green olives
3/4 c pitted picholine olives
Freshly chopped cilantro leaves
Freshly chopped flat-leaf parsley
Finely chopped fresh oregano
Squeeze lime juice.
Add the chicken to combine and serve.

Gno Joking

While sitting in restaurants looking over menus, Paul and I converse about the many different options. We point out dishes to each other that we think they would enjoy and we discuss items that neither of us has ever tried. And then the server comes to take our order. And the same thing happens practically every time. I do one of two things:

1. If I haven’t tried a variety of items on the menu, I test the waters and order something new.
2. If I’ve already tried many of the items on the menu, I order whatever sounds best at that moment in time.

And Paul also does one of two things:

1. He orders the exact same meal every time, no variation.
2. He can’t choose between two dishes (usually having tried both before), so he tells the server to choose for him.

I like to explore things I haven’t tried (within reason…after all, there are somethings that I truly think are really not meant to be eaten). I rarely end up highly disappointed. I know what I like and order within those parameters.

Paul, however, wants to be absolutely certain that he likes what he orders. So he orders the same thing every time and is also rarely disappointed.

But how boring!

This past weekend we had a similar experience, but not at a restaurant. It was at my sister’s. Anna and I try to get our families together monthly, enjoying each other’s company and making some good food. Anna is my co-conspirator in the kitchen. She likes to cook (not quite as much as I do, I fear), and she likes to try new things.

So once we found a mutually acceptable day, Anna and I needed to choose the menu. Neither of us wanted to get too wacky with things this month, but we definitely wanted something new. Something that would expand our repertoire and our palettes. After throwing around a couple of ideas, we finally both realized that neither of us had ever made, or even eaten, gnocchi.

Thus a dinner was born.

Paul was disappointed. He’d been hoping for something more familiar. Something safer.

But safe isn’t fun.

And we wanted fun.

So, not knowing what was ahead of us, Anna and I dived into the world of gnocchi.

We used this recipe from Recipezaar. The dough was pretty easy to make, and in case you’re wondering, if you forget to add the clarified butter when the recipe says to, you can easily go back and mix it in at the end. We meant to do it that way, to make sure that YOU have the best information possible. Really…did it all for you.

Once the dough was made, Anna and I disagreed on how to shape the gnocchi. On T.V. I’ve seen people use forks to make pretty little ridges in the pasta. Anna though they should be more like shells. So we each did our own. Mine are on the left, Anna’s are on the right.

They both worked about the same in the long run, though we should have made them smaller. They were too doughy. The delicious sauce we made was also from Recipezaar. I may never make gnocchi again, but I will absolutely make this flavorful, creamy, spicy sauce again. We added spicy Italian sausage to it, but really, it wasn’t necessary. It was amazing and will be wonderful with fettuccini or penne. Or just sopped up with a couple pieces of bread. Or eaten with a spoon.

Layered vegetable and cheese and pasta casserole

My first real job that didn’t involve caring for children was at the just-down-the-street Safeway deli. It wasn’t a bad job for a 19-year-old, and I got to try lots of things I’d never had the chance to before. Things like pastrami (don’t like it) and havarti cheese (love it!) I discovered that there was more than one kind of potato salad (old-fashioned, mustard and German) and that very few of the salads were made in-store. At that Safeway deli I learned the secrets to delicious fried rice (someday I’ll share) and deli trays.

But my favorite discovery in that Safeway deli was the vegetable lasagna. At that point in my sheltered life, I’d only recently discovered that lasagna could be made without cottage cheese – and it totally blew my mind that it could be made without tomatoes or meat also! I fell in love.

The lasagna was layers of pasta separated by carrots, broccoli, cheese, cream sauce, and who knows what else. And it was goooood.

That was way back before I ever became a cook. That was back when I thought Hamburger Helper was gourmet cooking. When I was impressed with my own mad cooking skills because I baked a potato in the microwave. When hot dates were treated to rice-a-roni beside a pre-seasoned frozen chicken breast (don’t worry…I cooked it first). So there was no WAY I even dreamed of trying to make lasagna myself!

But, like all good things, my days of veggie lasagna came to an end. I moved on; the deli in the city I moved to never had veggie lasagna, and although I often heard veggie lasagna mentioned, I always ended up disappointed when I found it made with a marinara sauce.

In the years since discovering that I can cook, I’ve toyed with the idea of recreating that veggie lasagna. The one thing that has held me back, however, is Farmer Paul’s reaction. Apparently, if it doesn’t have meat and tomato sauce, he feels that it can’t be lasagna.

So it has stayed a fond memory.

That is, until I saw February’s Recipes to Rival challenge: Homemade Ricotta cheese. I knew right then and there that I would try my hand at my memory. And it would be cheesy and veggie-y and delicious.

But you know how you remember something from years ago and then you try it again and you wonder why you thought it was so good way back when? Well, my homemade veggie lasagna was NOTHING like that. It was gooood.

But, to appease Paul, I can’t call it lasagna. Instead, it’s layered vegetable and cheese and pasta casserole deliciousness.

And did I mention it’s goooood?

Layered Vegetable and Cheese and Pasta Casserole
(aka Veggie Lasagna)

4 1/2 c thin white sauce (the consistency of cream)

Mix together veggies:
2 cups chopped carrots and broccoli (I used my food processor with the slicer blade), lightly boiled in salted water until crisp-tender then quickly cooled in ice water to retain the color and stop the cooking.
1/2 c cooked spinach, chopped and squeezed dry

Mix together:
2 c ricotta cheese
2 eggs
1 large clove garlic, chopped
salt & pepper

Grate:
8 oz fontina cheese
6 oz gruyere cheese
8 oz mozzarella cheese
4 oz parmesan cheese

12 – 15 no boil lasagna noodles (3 per layer…I used 12 for 4 layers)

Assembly:
Spread a little bit of white sauce on bottom of 9×13 baking dish (this keeps the lasagna from sticking)
Lay 3 noodles on top of sauce.
spread 1/3 of ricotta cheese mixture over noodles. Spread 1/3 vegetables over cheese. Sprinkle 1/4 of grated cheese over vegetables. Pour 1/4 white sauce over top.

Repeat layers two more times.

Finish with the last 3 noodles and remaining sauce and grated cheese.

At this point, I covered it in plastic and put it in the fridge for the next night’s dinner.

To bake: Preheat oven to 325. Bake lasagna, uncovered for 1 – 1 1/2 hours until bubbly, golden brown and ooey-gooey delicious.

A Dinner with my Valentine

I dislike Valentine’s Day. When I was a kid, it was SO MUCH FUN. After all, the combination of pink hearts, paper doilies, crafts and candy brought out the girly-girl in me. But once I got past elementary school, the holiday started to lose its appeal.

Since I’ve had kids, I’ve gotten some of the crafty Valentine’s fun back in my life, as you can see from the winning 5th grade “Funniest Valentine’s Bag” above. But really, I’m perfectly fine if the day passes without a single mention of it. Most years we have no celebration at all. It’s too commercialized for my taste.

This year, however, Paul used Valentine’s Day as the excuse to get me a wonderful, delicious present. A bottle of deliciously aged balsamic vinegar and another of black truffle oil. So of course, I had to create a meal worthy of this deliciousness.

We started off our dinner with shrimp sushi that had nothing to do with either the balsamic or the truffle oil. But it was sure good!

Then, we moved to the salad, which was dressed with the oil and vinegar combination. All I have to say, is Holy Crap! The combination makes for a fantastic dressing! We demolished our salads. Not a leaf was left.

Continuing on, we moved to the main course — Rib Steaks with Balsamic Mushrooms, sauteed spinach with garlic and baked potato. After the sushi and the salad, we were pretty stuffed. Although everything was good, we couldn’t even eat half of our steaks.

We paced the meal out while watching When Harry Met Sally. First sushi, then we started the movie. A Pause after the airplane scene for our salads, and another one after the “I’ll have what she’s having” scene for our steaks. When the movie was over, it was dessert time.

And dessert was Amaretto Souffle with Balsamic-Drizzled Strawberries and Amaretto whipped cream. You’ll notice how yellow the souffle is…that’s cause they’re made with eggs from our wonderful hens. Oh, the wonder of real eggs!

I’ll post later with the recipe for the souffle. Now that I’ve made one and it turned out so well, I’ll be making them often.