The Pasta Front Fights Back!

After so much risotto, it is time for some of the other starches to have a go. Tuna pasta bake is real comfort food that is a step up from macaroni cheese in the nutrition stakes.

At this point I would also like to observe that having a college age son and teenage daughter at home full time continuously raiding our food stocks like a biblical swarm of locusts makes me marginally more understanding of what is going on in supermarkets. We need more than twice as much food to keep them appeased. Which is not to excuse the #covidiot hoarders out there.

I would also like to mention the wonder of what I know as chinese leaf/cabbage (or sui choy, growing up in Hong Kong) but is, apparently, nappa cabbage. It is cheap, lasts a long time in the fridge and is a usefully pale and innocuous tasting brassica that can be readily slipped into kids nosh. The green parts of the leaves can be shredded and are mild enough used in a salad almost like lettuce.

Anyway, the ingredients are:

• 150g pasta (macaroni, shells, whatever)
• Good wodge of butter - 50g or so
• 3 tbsp plain flour
• 250-350ml milk
• 3 leaves of Chinese cabbage (2 if big)
• 1 large onion
• 1 small tin tuna
• Cheese to taste (I use extra mature cheddar, less to grate to get the flavour - did I mentiuon laziness?)
• Pepper

And off we go:

1. Preheat oven to 210C
   
2. Find a suitable ovenproof container - the dry pasta should fill it about 1/3 way
3. Put the pasta in to boil for 10 mins or whatever the packet says
4. While that's going finely chop the onion and leaf 
5. Grate the cheese into the oven container (why dirty another dish?)
6. Open and drain tuna and mash in the can with a fork
7. Drain pasta, leave in the colander but be quick with the next bit or it will stick together in a large lump!
8. In the pasta pan (why dirty another one? Laziness!) melt the butter and fry the onion and leaf until translucent on a high heat...at this point the leaf gets harder to detect
   
9. Add the flour and stir until it has absorbed the butter. It gets lumpy but that doesn't matter. Add a bit more butter if needed.
10. Add milk, a little at the time, stirring continuously to get smooth-ish sauce
11. Chuck in the cheese, vacating the oven container. Stir until melted
12. Add tuna, mix
13. Add pasta, mix
14. Decant into container and bake for 15-20 mins until suitably brown