This is not what you think it is. This is not some cheesy update of the classic, some stupid fluff piece written for an airline magazine.
Nope, this is the real deal: Tuna Noodle Casserole from scratch. Lets be clear what that means. For starters, we are not talking about making our own ribbon noodles. No, our time is better spent elsewhere. What we are talking about is deviating from the standard recipe in two basic ways: 1. we will prepare our own sauce and 2. we will use a vastly superior tuna product, a food service item sold by Wild Planet Seafoods. This tuna is cooked in its own juices in a foil pouch, rather than being canned. It has a fabulous texture and many people have never encountered tuna of this caliber, so they will be impressed just for that. Also, this tuna is troll-caught from a sustainable northwest fishery. It is low in mercury and high in omega-3 fatty acids. Thats what we want. You can drink the cool-aid here.
So, if you want to skimp and just do the tuna part of this, i give you my permission. The dish will not shine like it would if you built your own sauce, but at least you will have some really toothsome and remarkably flavorful tuna in the mix. That alone will come off quite well. So, if thats the case, what you need to know is that they are sold over the internet and ship quickly to your door. I swear by these and buy the full case of 14 for $223. Each pouch contains 2 lbs. That's $15.99/pouch, roughly $8 per pound of albacore tuna loin. Thats not too bad. But I don't really expect you to go dropping that kind of change for these at this point. You don't know how good they are. The fewest they will ship is 3 pouches for $59.97.
So, if you really want to do this, then the first thing you need to do is to get online and buy this tuna first. Really. The work involved in making the sauce will not pay off quite the same way with canned tuna.
So, about the sauce. I call this sauce "Cream of Nothing Soup". It replaces the Campell's cream of mushroom soup that is standard for the recipe. The sauce is a Roux that is thickened with starch. It incorporates powdered mushrooms, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, white pepper, grapeseed oil, chicken stock and juice from the tuna pouch. It is allowed to simmer for an hour to build flavor before the starch is added. This is part of what makes the recipe so awkward, building this sauce really should take an hour to do it right. Also, powdered mushrooms have to be prepared ahead of time, being such a labor intensive process.
