Icarus's blog: "Hope- by any other name."

*yawns*

This is an oldie but reversey.

So my mom made a close faximily to a restaurant mushroom soup she had, thyme, shitake, etc.
I'm gonna lift the recipe off her because I fashioned something... easier and tastier than my old nemesis

Casserole.

The undoing of food.
Mass produced, sickeningly salty and deceptively complicated when promising simplicity, oozing in the wrong spots, crusty when it need not be.

So unhumbley american.

Blech!

Okay so what you'll need is about a cup and a half of mom's mushroom soup.

What do I know about this soup?
There's some portionment of multiple minced mushrooms
chicken broth
salt
cream
and not much else

What could it use? Garlic, thyme, and white pepper. It really is quite nice on its own.

Saute the mushrooms until they give off some aroma, I'd say for about every cup of minced mushrooms you've got about 2 cups of broth, and a quarter cup... maybe less of cream.

I can tell from the flavors that its a distant cousin to my soup of 1000 deaths.

Alright, now that we have that out of our way

Put your rice maker to work on a serving of long grain rice (seasoned wild rice would be wonderful here too) get that sauce to a gentle simmer, nothing too toasty, and put in about half a cup of grated aged hard white cheese, the sour stuff is pretty good here- hell my mom incorporates a lot of sour cream friendly flavors in her dishes, its why her german dishes are usually a big hit so you might be able to get away with some of the scoopables.

Incorporate that cheese and grab yourself one can of tuna, you -could- fry this seperate to wake up and sear some flavors with some coarse salt, herbage and shallot, make a pretty lil pile of tuna- but what I did was I just tossed it right into the soup/sauce and warmed it through. Too thin to be a sauce too thick to be a soup after I added the cheese.

When your rice is done, grab your favorite ring mold (mine just so happens to be!!! ... the very tuna tin I just emptied) make yourself a pretty little bed of rice, ladle on the soup, and layer on the tuna and garnish. More pepper and herbage to taste, maybe even some more grated cheese on top?

This is easy.
This is easier than ladling all that canned guck into a casserole and broiling it to kingdom come.
And it tastes better than your standard rice, cream o mushroom tuna casserole.

Note: I would NOT stir the rice into the soup/sauce. These items are greater than the sum of their parts, keeping them seperate let's you maintain the funky earthy smooth deliciousness of this soup with a bite of rice, or vice versa the clean starchy vibrance of the rice won't get muted by creamy salty cheesey goodness. But somehow, some reason, seperate in one spoon they create a chord not a single note.
Mixed and everything gets just a smidge... grey. I'd say the same for the tuna too.
Unless you're lazy and experimenting with flavorloss like I was, I'd have it as a layer not a homogenous item.
Make every bite pop with individuality and complex flavor, rather than smoothing out the wrinkles.

And never make casserole.
Ever.