A Twist on Tuna

A few weeks ago I was signing out of my Hotmail account. When you sign out, you are automatically re-directed to MSN.com, where you are bombarded by flashy ads, trashy headlines and other interesting tidbits. For example, todays headlines are, "Whaaa? Stars who stay the stupidest things" and "Hilariously ugly Christmas sweaters." On that particular day, I happened to notice a link claiming to contain all the tasty casserole recipes from your childhood.

I haven't eaten a casserole in over three years. My mom used to make the occasional casserole, but they were not a regular in her meal repertoire. I remember I always enjoyed her Tuna Casserole. I think it was probably because she would crush a bag of plain old Dutch chips and let us sprinkle them on top of the casserole to give it a little crunch. Don't diss it 'til you've tried it!

Anyway, remembering my fondness for casseroles past, I decided to give a Mediterranean Tuna-Noodle Casserole recipe a try.

Mediterranean Tuna-Noodle Casserole

With Special Thanks to Martha Stewart

(http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/mediterranean-tuna-noodle-casserole)

Ingredients:

1/3 cup olive oil, plus more for baking dishes

Coarse salt and ground pepper

1 pound wide egg noodles

2 red bell peppers (ribs and seeds removed), thinly sliced

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

5 cups whole milk

4 cans (6 ounces each) tuna in olive oil, drained

1 can (14 ounces) artichoke hearts, drained and thickly sliced

5 scallions, thinly sliced

1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan

Directions:

1. First, I preheated the oven to 400 degrees. Then I make a gigantic pot of wide egg noodles. I halved this recipe, and I still used a full bag of egg noodles. There were a LOT of noodles. I cooked them 2 minutes less than the box recommended so they would be al dente.

2. Then I used some olive oil to cook my sliced bell peppers. I sprinkled some salt and pepper on them. It wasn't necessary to cook them long. Just 4 to 6 minutes, until they turned tender.

Tenderizing red peppers.

Then I added the flour to the peppers, and continuously whisked in my milk. The recipe called for whole milk, but I used 2% to make it a tiny bit healthier.

Whisking sauce.

3. In the meantime, I had chopped up the can of artichoke hearts while generously sampling the chopped up products. You have to make sure that the artichoke isn't poisoned, so sampling it is a very important step. It's an added bonus that artichoke is so delicious! I also added some black kalamata olives to the recipe.

Non-poisonous artichoke hearts and olives.

4. Then I mixed everything in with the sauce. That included noodles, artichoke, olives, tuna and chopped onion (because I forgot to buy scallions at the grocery store). I mixed everything thoroughly, and added some more salt and pepper to taste. Then I poured the entire mixture into a 9 x 9 pan, and discovered that that was not big enough. I had to put some overflow into a loaf pan. Even halved, this recipe ended up making 6 servings! Then I smothered the surface of the casserole in parmesan cheese.

Cheese smothered casserole.

5. The last step was to bake the dish for about 20 minutes. I took mine out a little early (after only 16 minutes), because it was already golden-brown, and bubbling away.

Golden bubbly results.

Recipe success!

Tom suggested that next time we should add more olives. I agree. You can never have too many olives.

Nom nom nom!