Tuna Mornay Plus

This is an easy inexpensive recipe using tinned tuna. As all the vegetables are in the dish so it isn’t necessary for to have a side, although you could serve it with a salad or bread.

Method

• Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F. Grease an oven proof casserole dish
• Heat butter in a large saucepan and sauté onion, celery, carrot and zucchini for about 5 minutes until onion is soft.
• Add flour and stir for 1 minute until mixture is bubbly.
• Remove from heat and gradually stir in combined tuna liquid and milk. Return to the heat, add peas and corn and simmer for 5 minutes stirring, or until thickened.
• Add tuna, cream, nutmeg, parsley, pasta and 1/2 the cheese. Stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
• Spoon into casserole dish. Sprinkle top with combined breadcrumbs, cheese and paprika.
• Bake for 15 minutes then place under a hot rill to brown top.

Variations

• Leave out the pasta and the breadcrumb top and use the mornay to fill pancakes, pies or pastry cases
• In the picture above, I used brown rice instead of pasta
• This is a good “base” dish. Pretty much every ingredient in this recipe can be substituted for something else. Substitute the tuna for salmon, leftover chicken, roast beef etc. or leave out the meat to make it vegetarian. Substitute the vegetables for any that you have on hand. Instead of milk and tuna liquid, use stock or tinned tomatoes for the sauce and add flavour with a dash of wine; Depending on the combination, you may want to leave the cheese out, but could replace it with sundried tomatoes or olives – whatever takes your fancy.

Have you read these posts?

1. tuna noodle bake
2. Tuna Burritos
3. tuna rissoles
4. easy ‘what am i going to cook tonight’ pasta
5. chicken and sun-dried tomato pasta bake