Tuna Pasta Bake
Ingredients
- 4 oz pasta
- 42 g butter (unsalted)
- 1/4 c onion
- 3 T Flour (Plain)
- 1.5 c milk
- 1/4 t Salt (Table)
- 3.5 oz canned tuna (drained and flaked)
- 1/2 c shredded cheddar cheese
- 1/2 c peas
- 4 oz sliced mushrooms
- 1/2 t dried tarragon
- 1/4 t paprika
- 1/4 t freshly ground pepper
- 1/2 c buttered bread crumbs
Method
Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease a casserole dish (8" or 9" square works); set aside.
Start pasta water boiling while you prepare ingredients.
Cook pasta according to package directions; drain.
While pasta is cooking, melt butter in a saucepan and saute the onion until tender. Stir in the flour until absorbed. Slowly add the milk and salt, stirring constantly. Cook and stir until thickened.
Combine the tuna, cheese, peas, mushrooms, tarragon, paprika, and pepper; ad to white sauce, stir well.
Place half the cooked pasta on the bottom of the prepared casserole dish. Top with half of the creamy tuna mixture. Repeat. Evenly sprinkle the top with buttered bread crumbs.
Bake at 350F/Gas 4 for about 25-30 minutes.
Notes
SJ Note 10 Jan 2011: Chris quite liked this; I thought it was only mediocre. He was much hungrier than me, so I imagine that played a part. I originally put only 1/8 t salt in the dish, because it's much easier to add salt than to take it away, but it needs much more than that, in the future I'd start with 1/4t, as well as increasing other spices. We used crumbled cornbread for the buttered bread crumbs (since we had it, and since our corn bread is rather buttery), which did work well. The dish as a whole is likely salvageable, but isn't worth it to me at this time, so I'm rejecting it; my main problem was blandness, though, so if you want that, or want to tinker with the spices yourself, it is a good base recipe.