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!

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.

Too Tired to Think of Dinner

Thursday night I came home from work exhausted. I feel guilty saying that. After all, I don’t do manual labor. I don’t stand on my feet all day. I don’t even interact with customers. I sit at a desk and … and … well, I write a lot, I go to meetings, I research some, I review and revise budget numbers, make the occasional phone call and I do absolutely nothing that should lead to the type of total mind and body numbing exhaustion I felt last night.

Add that to the fact that I hadn’t pre-planned dinner, and I was lost. Nothing thawed from the freezer and nothing was inspiring me.

I didn’t worry too much really. Paul usually has an idea or two of what sounds good to him.

Nope. He’d had a big lunch and wasn’t very hungry.

Now, at this point, I could have just let it go and told everyone they were on their own. But the problem with that was that I didn’t want to be on my own for dinner. I wanted a warm and comforting family meal. Oh, and quick and easy.

I poked around online a little bit to see if anything caught my fancy. My limitations included avoiding heavy tomato sauces and spice since Mom was eating with us. So no spaghetti, no Tex-Mex.

Finally I found an eggplant/tomato/cheese/pasta recipe that I thought would be usable, despite not having any eggplant. I figured I’d just substitute ground beef in and it would be fine.

But when I got the package of pasta down out of the cupboard, my eye caught sight of the recipe on the back. It was titled something like “Beef, Tomato and Basil Pasta Bake”. Exactly what I was going to wing from the other recipe!

Now, I’d love to type the recipe here for you, but I can’t. I have tried to teach my kids to put trash in the trash can and sometimes they remember to do that better than others. This was one of those times.

But believe me when I say that it was good. Here’s what I did:

I browned ground beef, onion and garlic. Added several cut-up Roma tomatoes. Added some 1/2 & 1/2, chicken broth, salt and pepper. Then I mixed in 2 big handfuls of chopped up fresh basil. Mixed in the cooked pasta and little pieces of fresh mozzarella. Dumped it in a buttered baking dish, sprinkled it with parmesan and ran it under the broiler to get hot and bubbly.

It was warm and comforting, but not heavy. And it was really done quickly. Everyone ate it, most had seconds. And I’ll add it to my “I should make this again” file.

And so should you.

The Delishesness of Summer

Boy oh Boy was this ever good! This was one of those meals that happens when all the stars line up right. I had the leftover Julia Child Sauteed chicken, tomatoes that were right on the edge of starting to get mushy, and a handful of basil that needed a place to show off. And it found it, tucked among a mound of farfalle pasta. The recipe was super-easy…chop the tomatoes and a little bit of onion. Squeeze in 1/2 a lemon, a few glugs of olive oil, some of those little fresh mozzarella balls if you’ve got ‘em and some salt and pepper. Then cook the pasta…whatever kind you like. Once the pasta’s done, drain it, mix it with the tomatoes, some chopped up basil and Parmesan cheese. If you want to make it a meal, dump in a bunch of shredded chicken. Without the chicken, it’s the perfect side dish to take to a BBQ.

And really, how can you possibly go wrong if you show at a BBQ with this kind of tomato-ey, basil-y goodness. After all, doesn’t the combination just SCREAM summer?