Tuna Noodle Casserole

This is pretty much Fanny Farmer's recipe. I changed it slightly to make it denser in tuna and bigger.

This recipe is more complicated than the usual dump-everything-together version, but the results reward the extra effort. The biggest pain is having to hard-boil the eggs beforehand, but hey, shouldn't you always have hard-boiled eggs around? (Warning: do not go to a dive bar and buy pickled hard-boiled eggs instead.)

3 cups cooked noodles (1-1/2 cups uncooked; about 3/8 lb.)

3 cups white sauce:
5 tbsp. butter
5 tbsp. flour
3 cups milk (nonfat OK, but 1% or higher works better)

4 tbsp. butter
3/4 lb. mushrooms, sliced (about 3 cups)
1 cup breadcrumbs

2 small cans tuna (6-7 oz.)
5 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
1-1/2 tbsp. minced onion or shallot

You can cook the noodles beforehand, drain them, and rinse them in cold water. Or, if you are good at it, you can time the cooking so that you drain them just before putting them into the casserole. (I am not good at it.)

Melt the butter for the white sauce in a large saucepan. Whisk in the flour to form a roux and cook a couple minutes at least. Don't brown the roux unless you're headed off into some weird New Orleans version. Add the milk; the sauce will thicken better if you've heated the milk in a microwave first. If you add the milk little by little, it seems to take less time to thicken, but maybe that's just because you're doing more than just standing there whisking. Which is what you do until the white sauce is thick and bubbling. Remove from heat.

Simultaneously, with your other pair of hands, saute the mushrooms in a couple of the 4 tbsp. of butter. When they're done, fish them out with something like a slotted spoon, leaving as much behind as possible. (If you overcook them and have a lot of juices in the pan, just remove everything and use more butter.) Then saute the bread crumbs in the rest of the butter, getting them toasty but not dark brown.

Butter or Pam a baking dish or casserole (2 quarts or so). Put the noodles, tuna, eggs, onions, and mushrooms in and pour the white sauce over. Stir gently to mix. Cover with the bread crumbs and bake about a half-hour in a 350° oven. Or, before adding the crumbs, microwave for ten minutes or so, stirring once, and then top with the crumbs and bake about ten more minutes.

If the casserole is hot but the crumbs aren't brown, you can put it under the broiler for a couple minutes, but some baking dishes aren't broiler-friendly and may explode, putting out your ferret's remaining eye.