Noodle Casserole That Makes People Want to Marry You

Some friends and I were discussing some article I skimmed and promptly forgot everything about, including the site I read it on, except this: that a man wanted to divorce his wife because her tuna noodle casserole was so gross and she served it so often.

I’ll have to check with my resident geeks (ie. my husband, Tim, and my dad, Tom) but I think the Talmud actually does provide some legitimation for these grounds for divorce–there’s a kind of “if she burns the bread” clause.

But anyway, I said to my friends, I don’t want to brag, but my noodle casserole makes people want to marry me.

(Don’t want to brag? Whatever. Of course I want to brag! This stuff is good! )

And so one friend asked for the recipe, and here it is, as promised.

Salmon Noodle Casserole

Preheat oven to 400F. Set a large pot of salted water to boil for the egg noodles, and a smaller pot of salted water to boil for the broccoli.

In a saucepan over medium-high heat, dry saute 8 ounces fresh, cleaned, mushrooms, broken into pieces.

Continue to stir them for 10 minutes or so, or until they have given up much of their moisture. Add 1 medium onion, minced finely, and just enough butter to keep it from sticking. Cook another 10 minutes or so until onions are just short of browning. Remove from pan and set aside.

In same saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons butter, stir in 2 tablespoons flour and blend well over low heat until just short of browning. Whisking constantly, pour in 1 cup half and half. Continue to whisk and bring to just short of the boiling point, add onion and mushroom mixture, salt and pepper to taste, 1/3 cup milk and set aside.

Meanwhile, blanch and cool 1/2 lb (2 cups) of fresh broccoli. (ie. throw it in some boiling salted water for 1 minute, then drain and run under cool water; set aside.)

I think these noodles are the best ones.

Cook 12 ounces extra-wide whole-egg noodles for three minutes less than the shortest time suggested on the package, drain, rinse thoroughly with cool water.

Mix cooked noodles, sauce, and broccoli with 2 cups grated mild cheddar or jack cheese and 2 cans wild-caught salmon* (drained) and spread in shallow buttered ovenproof pan, sprinkle with 1 cup crushed high-quality potato chips.

(Yes, I realize that potato chips are not “healthy,” whatever that is. You can leave them out if you want, but don’t blame me if your casserole doesn’t attract the adulation you desire.)

These potato chips (local for me!) are the BEST!

Bake 20-25 minutes.

*you can skip the salmon to make it vegetarian, but why not support the lovely Leslie Leyland Fields‘ other job, too? ;)

About these ads

3 thoughts on “Noodle Casserole That Makes People Want to Marry You

  1. The article about the tuna casserole divorce was, I *think* in the NYT? It was about a country where they don’t have no-fault divorce, so people have to get creative to come up with reasons to divorce. Can’t remember what the country was. Australia maybe? I don’t know. How sad that our brains cannot retrieve this information!

    This looks so delicious. I love tuna casserole and I know I will love this. My silly, silly children won’t. And as for the potato chips, that big Harvard nutrition dude (Willett, I think?) once said something to the effect that potato chips, while junk food, aren’t the worst junk food because at least they are usually cooked in non-hydrogenated, natural oils. So there!

Please Join the Conversation!

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s