Welcome to Perseph's Cooking Corner! ^_^This page is where I will occasionally be putting a new recipe up for you to see. These will all be recipes that I have tried out myself, btw. ^_^ I will be writing in some comments throughout the instructions section that will hopefully make the recipes a bit easier to duplicate. =)
When looking at a recipe, though, do keep in mind that cooking is not an exact science, and so recipes tend to be fairly forgiving of any small mistakes or alterations or additions you may make. Slightly more or slightly less of one ingredient may make for subtle changes in the final taste of the food, depending upon what it is, but won't make much of a difference in the overall identity of the final taste, most of the time. Also, each time you prepare something is a unique experience, so if you feel like adding or changing something in a recipe one day... why not try it and see how it turns out? After all, a great number of really delicious recipes evolved from such experimentation, so... =)
Lastly, if you do try out any of the recipes I include here, I would love to hear from you on how they turned out! Don't feel shy about changing anything in any of these recipes in order to suit your personal taste, of course. And if you wish to tell me about any variations you've come up with and tried, and about how they turned out, please do! You can e-mail me at (perseph@apricot.com).
Anyway, on to today's recipe...
5/25/95
Today's recipe is tuna casserole. Baking time is only about
20 minutes, but total preparation time will vary according to one's
individual pace in the pre-baking section. It's fairly simple to make,
in any case. Also, there will be some variations and further notes on this
recipe at the bottom of this file, fyi... =)
Ingredients:
3 cans tuna (6 oz (170 g) size)
1 can cream of mushroom soup (condensed, 10.75 oz (305 g))
1 onion (chopped)
~1/2 C grated parmesan cheese
parsley (a couple stalks; chopped) (optional)
celery (a stalk, or maybe two; chopped) (optional)
salt
pepper
Instructions:
Before you begin, you might want to open the three tuna cans and
the soup can first, so you won't have to take the time to do so later,
and perhaps accidentally burn the onion while using the can opener... ^_^;
Also, either at the beginning, or some point later, you could Preheat your
oven to 275 degrees (F), if you like. Anyhow, that being done...
Peel and chop the onion. It doesn't have to be chopped into itty
bitty pieces, though... unless you prefer really small pieces, that is. =)
Oh, and don't hold your face *too* close to the onion while you're doing
this, of course, or the fumes might irritate your eyes... =)
At this point, you can also wash and chop some parsley and/or some
celery to add as well, if you like. Myself, I think adding some chopped
parsley adds a nice bit of flavor to the casserole. =)
In any case, add a bit of cooking oil, or some butter or margarine,
to a frying pan. Now take your vegetable ingredients and fry them in the
pan on High heat (on an electric range -- on a gas range, you might want to
have the heat a bit lower), stirring occasionally. Add a bit of salt and
some pepper for taste. Keep frying and stirring until the chopped onion
begins to brown. Or you could stop a little before that, if you like, since
it's going to be cooking in the oven for 20 more minutes anyway...
Now add the three cans of tuna. Mix and stir. Basically, you're
just warming the tuna a bit here, before it goes in the oven. Now add the
can of condensed mushroom soup and the grated parmesan cheese (about half
a cup, but it doesn't have to be exact or anything (smile)). If you're
wondering about brands, I use Campbell's and Kraft, respectively. ^_^
Mix and stir.
You can turn the range off now, btw. =)
Take a casserole dish and pour the contents of the frying pan
into it. If you don't have a large enough casserole dish, you can use
two smaller ones instead. Basically, you just don't want the casserole
itself to be *too* deep... The poured contents should be at most, perhaps
an inch deep (or maybe 1.25") in the dish.
Now smooth the contents of the casserole dish, if necessary, and
sprinkle some more grated parmesan on top. This cheese should melt by
the time the casserole is done, so if you like parmesan, feel free to be
a bit more liberal with the cheese here. =)
Cover the casserole dish and put it in the oven. If you had your
oven on Preheat, make sure to switch it to Bake now! Bake at 275 degrees
(Fahrenheit) for 20 minutes. If you have a timer or alarm, you could use
that. Otherwise, just remember the time.
If you've nothing else to do during the 20 minutes, you could
actually use the time to clean the frying pan, which'll be a lot more
troublesome to deal with if you give it time to... settle. ^_^;
Once the 20 minutes are up, check the casserole. The casserole
dish will be hot, so make sure to use a potholder or something to protect
your hands! Remove the cover and examine the casserole. If the edges are
just beginning to brown, then you've timed things just about right. ^_^
If your oven is a little on the weak side, though, you might want to leave
the casserole in for a little while longer... maybe a couple minutes. Use
your own judgement.
Now turn the oven off and remove the casserole dish from it. The
tuna casserole is now ready to serve! Serve with rice, or even pasta, if
you like. I usually use rice, but it could go well with certain pastas
as well... perhaps egg noodles, or rotelle, or something. ^_^
And now, enjoy!
The recipe as stated above should serve perhaps 2-4 people,
depending upon how hungry they are, and what else it was served with. =)
Notes and variations:
I've substituted turkey for tuna in this recipe before, and that
also worked fairly well. Just make sure the turkey meat is pre-cooked,
since 20 minutes in an oven at 275 degrees F is nowhere near enough time
to properly cook turkey meat... ^_^; White meat seemed to work better
than dark meat, imho, btw. =) And you want the turkey to be shredded,
rather than in larger chunks, of course.
Getting back to the original tuna recipe, since there are a
number of different kinds of tuna one can get, here are some observations
on how different types of tuna will affect the recipe. Firstly, if you
use premium albacore tuna (which is more expensive), rather than normal
chunk light tuna, you'll have a casserole made with better quality tuna.
The casserole will be of a slightly different texture, but if you like
albacore tuna, the recipe will certainly allow for that.
And then there's tuna packaged in water, as opposed to tuna
packaged in oil... If you use tuna packaged in water, make sure to
drain away as much of the water as you can, as otherwise, the finished
casserole may taste a bit, umm... watery. You can cook the tuna in the
frying pan for a little longer to evaporate away more of the water... or
you could also add a bit of vegetable oil to the mixture. All in all,
it's not an absolutely imperative concern... but experience has shown
that leaving too much water in the mixture can change the taste of the
final product, so I thought I'd mention it here. ^_^
When using tuna packaged in oil, make sure to drain away most of
the oil too, though... or one's final casserole may end up being... well,
quite oily. ^_^;
And of course, there's nothing that prevents one from mixing
different types of tuna in the casserole... =)