Cat food casserole

this is a whimsical twist on the Midwestern classic

Hiya, clowns!

This week on the greatest food newsletter on the face of the planet, we tackle one of the spiciest foods known to man: tuna casserole. I’d say this is the perfect way to kick off AAPI Heritage Month (as a Korean-American I thank you for your guilty month-long applause). If mysterious brands can capitalize off of Korean culture, Food is Stupid can likewise capitalize off the most exotic cuisines this big country has to offer, in the same shared spirit.

“But Dannis,” you say, with a quizzical look on your face, “Tuna casserole is easily one of the most flavorful and sacred dishes America has given the world. How on earth could you improve upon something so marvelous?”

I turned and asked one the world’s most foremost culinary experts: Davida.

After some serious deliberation, she said three devastating words while nodding gravely.

“Cat food casserole.”

In order to get started, I would need a flagship tuna casserole recipe to rui—er, transform, into an innovative human-cat fusion cuisine.

I started with a classic, which is Campbell’s tuna noodle casserole. It’s a pretty straightforward recipe, which includes egg noodles, tuna, Cream of Mushroom soup, milk, and peas. If that doesn’t sound like the pinnacle of flavor, I don’t know what does, to be honest. Kimchi’s got nothing on this shit, right?

As I boiled off the egg noodles per the recipe’s instructions, I closely inspected the Applaws Natural Cat Food I had picked up.

It looked okay, to be honest. What was interesting was its inclusion of peas and carrots in the mix. I did not know that peas and carrots were a part of a cat’s natural diet. I realize that housecats have evolved to be ferocious hunters, but hunting peas and carrots? That is truly some apex predator shit.

I popped open one of the containers in order to perform a taste test.

You can see Scorpion’s dumb head at the bottom of this photo. He was trying to hunt some peas and carrots but was coming up short as he does not know how to bust into the refrigerator and get into the crisper, which is their natural habitat.

I tried some fish. Interestingly, it did not taste like the pâté-like stuff we normally feed our cats, but rather like regular old canned tuna. However, this was not like the fancy stuff you can get packed in oil, it was chewy and tasted pretty overcooked. It also had no seasoning, since cats are not supposed to eat things like salt and garlic or whatever. Otherwise they will become too discerning, band together and riot over their food choices, and humanity will be eliminated.

Once the egg noodles were cooked, I dumped them in the casserole pan and prepared the rest of the ingredients.

I dumped in cat food, along with Campbell’s condensed Cream of Mushroom soup.

Cream of Mushroom soup is one of the most versatile foods known to man. You can use it to create nearly any casserole you want, and there’s no limit to its true power. Just know that when you hold onto a can of this stuff, you wield one of America’s great mother sauces.

I said that mother sauce thing partially as a joke, but now that I think about it…I may accidentally have made some kind of weird revelation about American cooking.

I added some frozen peas, and remembered to grab the milk.

This wasn’t just any milk, however.

This was kitten milk replacer.

You longtime readers of the newsletter (thank you!) may remember that we’ve used this stuff previously in a cocktail, specifically a white Russian, which surprisingly ended up tasting pretty palatable. Kitten milk replacer tastes mostly like evaporated milk, but at $11 a can, this is one pricey ingredient.

Kittens have some discerning taste, what can I say?

I poured a hefty dose of the kitten milk replacer into the noodle mixture, stared blankly at it for a while, and thought about starting a new, non-food related hobby.

After stirring it and soaking in the enjoyment of the wet slappy sound noodles make while being stirred, the cat food casserole was about ready to hit the oven.

The casserole was in the oven for a full two minutes before I realized I’d forgotten the dry topping.

I found this interesting shaved dried tuna meal topper for cats, to pour on the casserole before I stuck it in the oven. The flakes looked like dried bonito flakes that are so often used in Japanese cooking (in fact, I have a sneaking suspicion they were some form of bonito flakes). Breadcrumbs seemed like the wrong idea for a cat food casserole, and these were a perfect finisher.

I popped it back in the oven so it could continue its transformation into the Midwestern classic, along with my hopes and dreams for a better life.

After the 20 minutes was up, I brought the casserole out and eyed it up.

I mean, it looked like a tuna casserole, all right, and it smelled like one too. The tuna flakes on top had a strong fishy aroma, which reminded me that cat food was an integral part of this scrumptious dish before me. After letting the stuff cool off for five minutes, I dug in.

After my first forkful, I scratched my head, then went in for another bite.

Aside from the overly powerful desiccated tuna flakes on top, this cat food casserole tasted exactly like human food. It was sort of hard to believe that it was so normal-tasting, yet there it was, a baked noodle dish that tasted like the Midwest and nothing like the cat food contained therein. I told you guys that Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup was a powerful cooking tool. I give it some mad respect.

I motioned to Davida, who came over to try it. She took a forkful, looked sort of stunned, then gave me a high-five.

“I was expecting it to be off in some way,” she said, “but it isn’t.”

This makes me wonder, have people been feeding me cat food casserole this whole time? At the cafeteria, and when invited over to friends houses for dinner? I mean, I heard some pretty cruel things about Korean food during my childhood on occasion (mainly about the consumption of domestic pets), but perhaps I was being played all along by being fed their food. There’s so much to think about, but it’s only the beginning of May, so we’ve got a while until you conveniently forget all about who I am again, for 11 months.

Happy AAPI Heritage Month, everyone!

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For paid subscribers this week, I’ll be on my continued cat food bullshit by making cat food salad sandwiches, which is another American delight that I’ll be sure to consume in the office on a regular basis from now on. My coworkers will love me.

As always, I love you all (really!). Do your best to have a good week, I’m rooting for you, and I’ll hop into some of your inboxes on Friday.