Because I Love You Tuna Casserole
put your biggest pasta pot on to boil, and butter a large casserole dish that can go in the oven. heat your oven to 375°. When water is at a rolling boil, add a box of elbow noodles, spirals or other happy, short shape of creamy sauce holding pasta. Cook until al dente and drain while chopping veggies or making the sauce.
gently wipe clean a pint of mushrooms then separate their caps from their stems. Chop the heads and mince the legs. Set aside in two little bowls; you will need 6 little bowls to set your mise en place for this recipe. The Radical Muffin kitchen recently had a perfect set of nesting glass bowls move in so the cook is blissed out with happy, obsessive pre-chopping and arranging. Peel and chop a medium sweet onion, yellow. Chop three very green, delicate celery stalks. Shred a block of white cheddar cheese on the largest opening on a box grater. Drain two small cans or one big can and one small can of tuna – dolphin safe for heaven’s sake.
in a heavy bottomed sauce pot, melt two to three tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Add the onions and celery when the butter begins to foam, and sauté until soft, about 5 minutes. Stir in a teaspoon or so of celery salt. Toss in the stems of the shrooms then the caps and cook for a bit longer, until they begin releasing their juices. Sprinkle a small handful of flour (about three tablespoons or less; I have small hands) over this cooking base and stir, cooking the raw taste out of the flour for a few minutes.
pour in ½ a cup of heavy cream and a 1 ½ of whole milk slowly as you stir. Cook to simmering but do not boil and stir in a handful of shredded cheese.
eyeball how much of the pasta you will need to fill your casserole dish, and mix that amount with your sauce in a big bowl. If you like, and my best friend likey-likes, stir in a package of frozen peas or fresh if you are so lucky as to have them. You will likely have remaining pasta, for which there are 50,000 uses, and possibly sauce, which is great over broccoli, omelets, potatoes or more pasta.
in the casserole, make an initial layer of sauced noodles, about halfway. Sprinkle with a handful of cheese, and fork the pressed tuna out of the cans and over the noodles. Top the fish with another layer of noodles and liberally grind fresh pepper over these and sprinkle with celery salt. Cover the entire casserole with shredded cheese and dust with paprika.
bake in the oven for about 12 minutes or until the cheese is browned and melted. Traditionally, this is topped with crushed potato chips, which is a pleasure to be tried at least once. Buttered bread crumbs or pink flakes also add crunch. But for the purest comfort, I cannot help but love the gentle chewy crispness of cheese alone.
sicilian pasta sauce and fennel meet balls
uncork a bottle of respectable red table wine. Pour a half a cup into a wine glass with a generous bowl, swirl. Enjoying your wine, read this recipe entirely:
slice two yellow onions and one red bell pepper. Smash, peel, and mince five cloves of garlic. Setting aside the rest for your sauce, two of the cloves and a handful of the onion are for your faux meat balls.
mince this onion finely. In a mortar with a pestle, crush two teaspoons of fennel seeds with 2 teaspoons of coarse sea salt. In a big bowl, add these spices and a teaspoon of black pepper to the onions and garlic. Add a handful of quick cooking oatmeal and one egg. These are made with egg in a nod toward my grandfather’s original recipe, but you can omit the egg and the oatmeal and have tasty balls (note: the oatmeal or bread or cracker crumbs, is a good extender to make more balls for cheaper). Let this all rest together while you get on with the sauce. Stick it in the fridge if you are neurotic about leaving out egg at room temperature.
in a hot pot—a large stock pot with a heavy bottom, heated over a medium flame—toast a proportion to taste of hot and sweet paprika and red pepper flakes. I used about two teaspoons of sweet paprika and one teaspoon of hot paprika and red pepper flakes. Pour olive oil into the pot, about three tablespoons, bring to hot and pour the red pepper and onion and garlic into the pot. Cover and cook over medium-high for five minutes: in a series of 3 x 5, every five minutes for a cycle of three times cook and stir and cover the spicy pepper mix. Add sea salt and black pepper.
as this base cooks down, rub clean a pound of crimini mushrooms, ranging from a quarter in diameter to fungi the size of an egg. De-stem them, and slice the heads into threes, making fat slices. Add them to the pot, and do another round of 3 x 5 cooking and stirring.
stir in three tablespoons of tomato paste. Pour in two large cans (28 ounces each) of crushed tomatoes. By all means if you come by this recipe in the heart of tomato season then boil & peel and crush a whole pile of fruit, but in early spring in Brooklyn, the cans are fine and preferable. Add a smaller can of diced tomatoes. Bring to a slow, popping simmer and cook for an hour or longer.
about half an hour before you want to eat, put a big pot of water onto boil.
add a tube of ground beef style soy “meat” to the big bowl of eggy, spicy slop, and mix it together well with your hands. Roll tablespoons of mixture into balls.
heat a heavy skillet and when it is hot, add a few tablespoons of olive oil. Fry the balls until brown on all sides.
pour a few generous slugs of wine into your sauce and stir. Add your fried meet balls. Bring the sauce back to a simmer.
add a box of noodles to the boiling water: spaghetti is Italian-American classic; fettuccini is seductive; and penne, somehow, feels domestic and family-like. Cook until al dente and drain. Pile noodles on a plate or in a bowl as appropriate, top with sauce. Somewhere in this cooking, maybe put together a nice salad. Now sit down with you, and whomever you dine with if you are dining in company or family, and polish off the wine.
as it simmers, you can also read this blog:
http://thyme-for-herbs.blogspot.com/
and maybe, watch a little more labyrinth:
booty spicy chickpea penne
Prelude recipe: herbed peppers
Drizzle olive oil over a hot iron skillet, and sauté yellow and red pepper strips until soft and slightly charred (about 20 minutes). Halfway through the cooking time, generously sprinkle with dried Herbes de Provence and sea salt. Store in a glass jar covered in olive oil and store until use. Keeps for weeks in the fridge, but happier on the counter out of sunlight and used in a week.
Booty Spicy Chickpea Penne
This is a great weeknight one-bowl dinner if you have pre-cooked pasta stashed in your fridge like I happened to have along with some chickpeas I had soaked and cooked. An easy lunch while I was cleaning my space today. I am usually a big slut, but in this decade of 30s, I am finding keeping my space clean helps me get more done.
If you do not have cooked pasta on hand, boil a pot of water at the outset and cook some noodles. Penne is good with the chunky sauce, and any similar short, hearty textured noodle will be harmonious.
Slice a handful of cherry tomatoes in half across their fat middles. Chop a few yellow squash spears.
Heat a big iron skillet over medium heat and toast a generous sprinkle of hot and sweet paprika and turmeric, stirring with a wooden spoon & careful not to burn. Add olive oil and turn up the heat, a medium high flame – almost a high flame, be bold about it; it is tasty when the pasta fries. Add the tomatoes and about a teaspoon of sea salt. Cook until sizzling, stir and let it sizzle again and keep at it while you drain a large can of chickpeas and rinse them thoroughly (or maybe you have soaked and cooked chickpeas for yourself this week, good for you, muffin.). Add your chickpeas and pasta. Cook—I like to let it sit unstirred for five minutes or more, searing, gathering a little crust.
Chop the oil, herbed pepper strips: either stick a knife in the jar, or cut them in the pan (it is a messy pain to pull them out and slice on a board- unnecessary!). Stir a generous amount of peppers and their oil into the pasta. Cook for five minutes or so with the squash spread on top of everything; sprinkle with more Herbes de Provence.
This dish is happy to sit in the pan with the heat on low or even off for a long time (since the pan hold the heat) while you finish a task or when family folk are trailing in and our of the kitchen, looking for food on their own schedule.
