That’s tuna pasta bake in French. Everything sounds better in French. I love tuna pasta bake, or tuna casserole as I called it growing up in America, but most people tend to see it as stodgy, flavourless, and terminally uncool. I hate to imagine the tuna pasta bakes they’ve had, because for me it’s one of the tastiest, most satisfying comfort foods around.
Tuna pasta bake is based around either a béchamel sauce (milk thickened with a flour and butter roux) or a mornay sauce (béchamel with added cheese). Béchamel is one of the four “mother sauces” of classic French cuisine, and probably the easiest to make of the four. You just take equal measures of flour and butter (about a tablespoon of each per cup of milk) stir it over medium heat until it forms a paste and just BARELY starts to smell nutty and turn the palest shade of toasty brown, and then add the milk and stir like crazy until it starts to thicken. Simmer it over low heat for a few minutes until it’s as thick as you like and season with salt and black pepper. White pepper is traditional to keep it all smooth and lovely and white, but I like the black specks.
