Or how I managed to channel Roy Kent and Chris Peterson in one fell swoop…

Tonight was Night 1 of the great cooking adventure. I’m toddling along in the kitchen, having makrut lime leaves infusing in simmering milk for my Béchamel sauce when I look in the pantry to start the next step of preparation.

“Where’s the vegetable oil?”

Thousand-one, thousand-two…

“FUCK!!!!!!!!”

Hat tip to Food From Portugal for the source recipe¹ for tonight’s experimentation.

Denizens of current pop culture probably recognize the name Roy Kent. If not, he’s the player-turned-coach from Ted Lasso played by Brett Goldstein. Distilling his character down to only one trait is insultingly reductive, but fans of the show know all about his legendary potty mouth.

Chris Peterson, on the other hand, is not a name I’d expect most people to know. No, he’s not the former Boise State football coach (that would be Chris Petersen). No, he’s not the host of “To Catch a Predator” (that would be Chris Hansen).

Back in the fledgling days of FOX Network in 1990, they were casting about trying to find stalwarts for their comedy lineup. FOX had Married…with Children going strong, and they had found the wheat in the chaff that was the Tracey Ullman Show and made it into its own show called The Simpsons. However, there was still a whole lot of forgettable crap that they were broadcasting trying to find consistent viewership.

One of the shows that was part of this mélange was a Chris Elliott vehicle called “Get A Life”². It was one of the favorite shows of my best friend around that time (I was in high school, but he wasn’t — he was my age, but his parents were junk dealers and he ran a baseball card shop), but I thought it was pretty stupid. The lead character (Chris Peterson) was a 30-year old paperboy with…challenges³.

I don’t remember much of the series at all, but there is one episode that sticks with me⁴. Chris Peterson is not a smart man, but through some mumbo-jumbo he winds up becoming smart for a period of time. During this time, he winds up in a spelling bee against a villainous Soviet trope who’s spelling absurd words in English while Peterson spells easier but silly words.

After a couple rounds of this, the mumbo-jumbo wears off, and Chris Elliott’s character is back to his level of normal. He’s presented with the word he’s supposed to spell.

“Please spell the word pants.”

“Pants.” sweating profusely “K-“

Bzzzzzzzt.

Print Recipe

Featured Recipes

Potato tuna bake

Author: John R Cooking Method: Baking, Sauteeing Cuisine: Portugese Courses: Main Course Recipe Keys: P potato T tuna

Difficulty: Intermediate Cook Time 50 mins

Servings: 4

Best Season: Winter

Dietary:

G gluten-friendly

Ingredients

Scale

1/2x 1x 2x 3x

Tuna Potato Bake

• 2 tbsp butter (unsalted)
• 2 lb white potatoes (diced)
• 14 oz tuna in olive oil (I used 2 jars of Tonnino Yellowfin Tuna Fillets in Olive Oil)
• 1 yellow onion, large (sliced thinly)
• 3 clove garlic (minced)
• ¹⁄₂ tsp sweet paprika
• 1 palmful chervil (dried)
• 1 cup Béchamel sauce
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
• 2 handful Chihuahua cheese (grated)

Béchamel sauce

• 1 cup milk (2%)
• 3 makrut (Kaffir) lime leaves (dried)
• 2 tbsp butter (unsalted)
• 2 tbsp glutinous rice flour

Instructions

Béchamel Sauce

1. Pour milk into a small saucepan, then add the lime leaves. Bring to a bare simmer, whisking occasionally. Remove the lime leaves, then reserve the milk and wipe out the saucepan.

2. Turn stovetop burner on to medium heat. Add butter and allow to melt. Add the glutinous rice flour and whisk vigorously to combine in order to make a roux. Once the roux has formed, add simmered milk in several small batches, whisking constantly until all of the milk is incorporated and the sauce is thickened.

Tuna Potato Bake

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Working in batches, add butter to a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Allow the butter to melt, then add potatoes and cook until browned. Move to a plate with paper towels and allow to drain.

3. Drain the olive oil from the jars of tuna into the skillet. Add the onions and sauté 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onions are just browning. Add the minced garlic and stir for 1-2 minutes. Add the drained tuna and sweet paprika and cook, using the spatula to combine and break up fillets, 3-4 minutes. Add the potatoes and cook for 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally, then add chervil. Check seasonings and add salt and pepper to taste.

4. Combine the Béchamel sauce and heavy whipping cream, whisking vigorously. Pour on top of the contents of the skillet, stirring to combine. Add Chihuahua cheese to the top of the skillet, then move the skillet to the oven. Cook uncovered for 25-30 minutes until cheese is melted and gooey.

Note

• The source recipe recommends using 2 tablespoons vegetable oil instead of butter to fry the potatoes.
• I used Penzey’s ground pepper blend

 

 

Keywords: casserole, seafood, cheesy

Rate this recipe:

My biggest fear in this adventure is serving bad/inedible food. My second-biggest fear is serving bland food.

I looked over the base recipe and saw bland on bland on bland. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to spice it enough to get over that without ruining the original character of the dish.

I pulled out my copy of The Flavor Bible and looked up Portuguese cuisine, tuna, potatoes, etc. One flavor pairing that was recommended was lime; hence, I decided to simmer the lime leaves in milk. I also had dill seed at the ready to grind and add to the dish, but I decided against that at the last minute.

Thoughts:

1) Don’t bother infusing the lime leaves into the milk. The milk smelled very citrusy, but the flavor didn’t come through at all – no one who ate it could tell it had been done.

2) There was a lot more flavor here than I was really anticipating. I’m not sure if that was because of using a more gourmet tuna choice instead of Chicken of the Sea, but it was actually quite good.

3) I didn’t figure anyone would be able to tell that I made the roux gluten-free, but it was a relief to know no one found anything off about the flavor.

4) The dish got very good reviews overall, and is definitely a keeper per the jury of my peers.

5) One commenter (who shall remain nameless): “I really like the chicken, the potatoes, the cream sauce.”⁵

Verdict:

Taste: 7.5/10. I could see myself craving this on a really cold, dark night.
Availability: 8.5/10. The only thing I’m not likely to have available at any given time to make a dish like this is the heavy whipping cream.
Story: 9/10. All’s well that ends well, and organically pulling a Chris Elliott vehicle from 30+ years ago out of the cobwebbed portions of my brain is always a bonus.
Lessons learned? Double-check the essentials. Bouncing back from a lack of vegetable oil was pretty simple. Bouncing back from a lack of, say, balsamic vinegar⁶ would be much more difficult.

Administrivia:

1) Comments are enabled, but I have to approve them.

2) People have mentioned wanting to get notifications via email when I post. I’m working on figuring out how to do that.

3) This recipe plugin is going to drive me batty. The only values I want to show for this particular recipe are Difficulty, Cook Time, and Servings. It shows like that in Edit mode, but whenever it gets posted it shows all the categories. I’ve got a support ticket into the company to tell me how to fix this shit, but who knows when they’ll get around to me even though I’m paying for a license.

4) Is it just me, or is WordPress just a service to transfer money from aspiring influencers to companies? Want to post recipes? Get the plugin and pay for the license. Want to send subscription notifications? Get the plugin and pay for the email service to power it.

5) All this miscellaneous SEO bullshit can go DIAF.

1. https://www.foodfromportugal.com/recipes/creamy-potato-tuna-bake/ ↩︎
2. Truly the most memorable part of the show is the theme music: “Stand” by R.E.M. ↩︎
3. Thank you to Wikipedia for filling in all the gaps here. ↩︎
4. I’m not looking up details of this episode though. I’m going strictly from memory. ↩︎
5. I suppose that just goes to prove that tuna really IS the chicken of the sea. ↩︎
6. Mental note^a: I don’t have any balsamic vinegar.
   a. Another of the FOX sitcom class of 1990: “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose”.
   ↩︎