A watercolour of pasta in a pale creamy sauce with tuna and yellow sweetcorn, topped with golden toasted crumbs
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from The tuna pasta bake, without the oven or the cheese

Tuna and sweetcorn pasta

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Olive oil.

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves
3
Burners
1
Pans
1
Water
2 L
Active
12 min
Total
22 min

Ingredients

  1. Crush the crackers coarsely and toast them dry in the pan for two minutes until they smell nutty. Tip out.
  2. Pasta on, water properly salted. Keep a mugful of the water.
  3. Slake the cornflour with cold water.
  4. Evaporated milk, 100 ml pasta water and the mustard into the pan at a bare simmer. Cornflour paste in, two minutes to thicken.
  5. Drained sweetcorn in, then off the heat the drained tuna, folded not stirred.
  6. Pasta through, loosened with pasta water. Crumbs over at the table.

The mustard is doing more than it looks: without cheese the sauce has no sharp note at all, and mustard supplies it.

Crumbs at the table, never stirred in: they go soft within a minute.

Serves 3.

What this was adapted from

The tuna pasta bake, without the oven or the cheese

  • a cheese sauce and a baked crust → evaporated milk thickened with cornflour, and toasted crumbs

    A bake needs an oven and cheese needs a fridge. Evaporated milk with cornflour gives a sauce that clings; crushed crackers toasted dry give the crunch the baked top would have. Less rich, and it takes twenty minutes rather than fifty.