SUN COOKING USA
AROUND THE WORLD
The Simplest Solar Pasta Sauce
This classic Italian pasta sauce couldn’t be easier. Even when cooked stovetop there’s no need to saute the onion. In Italy it’s each serving is topped with a pat of butter and a good grating of Parmesan cheese.
Solar Tomato and Butter Sauce
Ingredients
3 cups imported canned whole peeled tomatoes, with their juices and coarsely chopped*
Sun Oven ‘Boiled’ Pasta
When I teach solar cooking classes I get a strew of questions about what can and cannot be cooked in the Global Sun Oven and pasta always comes up. My answer is, “Yes, it can be done but I’ve only done it once.” There are a number of reasons why I don’t boil pasta in my GSO for daily cooking. Apart from the fact the pasta is easier, and in my opinion better, when cooked in the traditional manner, it also needs to be served immediately; we have dinner too late in the day to solar cook pasta. But it’s still good to know that it is possible to make a decent bowl of solar cooked noodles. It comes in handy in any kind of situation where you might be low on water or power, such as a camping trip or a natural disaster. Luckily, once you know how to successfully solar cook pasta you can store the information away for a time when you might need it.
Solar Pasta
Solar Pesto Lasagna
This lasagna can be as easy or as labor intensive as you want it to be. The pesto and tomato sauce can be purchased or homemade. I like using my solar roasted tomatoes (click here for recipe) but a chunky store-bought sauce works just fine. I much prefer homemade pesto to the commercial kind, but again, if pressed for time, go with high-quality store-bought.
Ingredients
3 cups ricotta cheese
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 lage egg, beaten
2 10-oz packages frozen chopped spinach, thawed, squeezed dry
1 7-0z package prepared, or 3/4 cup homemade
4 cups purchased chunky tomato sauce or chopped solar roasted tomatoes (from about 3 pounds fresh tomatoes)
Succulent Solar Mac n’ Cheese
Macaroni and Cheese is another special occasion food in our house. Since I only get to enjoy it once a year or so I don’t hold back by using any reduced fat dairy products. I usually make it for when we have company so leftovers are not really and issue. If there is a portion or so still in the dish when the guests have gone home I freeze it for a treat on a later day.
Ingredients
6 tablespoons butter, divided
2 tablespoons dry breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Old Italian Recipe Gets GSO Update
This pasta sauce is a recipe that I cut out from an Italian magazine almost thirty years ago. It goes very well with whole wheat or white pasta. Part of the fun of making it is buying the radicchio. The supermarket cashiers almost never know what it is. Sometimes I think I’m the only person who ever buys it.
Sun Oven Radicchio and Bean Pasta Sauce
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 medium heads radicchio*, cored and shredded
1 14-oz can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
12 oz. fusilli or other similar shaped pasta
Preparation
Set Global Sun Oven out to preheat.
Heat oil over medium heat in a large pot. Add onion and saute until soft; about 5 minutes. Add wine and radicchio, cover and place in GSO. Cook until radicchio has wilted and most of the wine has evaporated; about 1 hour. Stir in beans and continue cooking until heated.
Cook pasta according to instructions on package, drain reserving 1 cup of the cooking water. Stir cooked pasta into the sauce in the pot, add cheese and salt and pepper to taste. If the sauce is too dry add some of the reserved cooking water.
Serves 4
*Radicchio, a type of chicory, can be found in the produce section of many supermarkets.
Tomatoes in the Sun
Slow sun roasted tomatoes are a good project for a partially cloudy day. Even if the Sun Oven’s temperature drops to the 200ºF range they’ll come out fine. They can be used to make pasta sauce or stored in the refrigerator and used in sandwiches. This recipe is for a small batch. It makes enough sauce for 2 – 3 servings of pasta. It can easily be doubled and cooked in one go by stacking the baking pans in the cooking chamber.
Sun Roasted Tomatoes
Ingredients
8 roma tomatoes
2 cloves garlic, minced
Salt
Pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh basil, torn into pieces (if using tomatoes to make pasta sauce)
Preparation
Place the Sun Oven out to preheat
Cut tomatoes in half and remove seeds. Place in 11- by 7- inch glass baking dish cut side up. Sprinkle garlic into the cavities, season with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil. Bake in Sun Oven until tomatoes have shriveled slightly; 1 1/2 to 3 hours depending on cooking chamber temperature.
For pasta sauce – Save oil from the roasting pan. Allow tomatoes to cool enough to handle. Scrape flesh away from the skin with a knife. Discard skins. Coarsly chop the flesh. Combine the reserved olive oil and the tomatoes in a saucepan over a medium-low heat. Simmer, stirring occasionally while the pasta cooks. Stir in basil just before combining the sauce with the pasta. Serve with freshly grated parmesan cheese.
Meatballs in the Sun
In this recipe the meatballs don’t need to be browned, making it ideal for the GSO. I usually serve them over spaghetti for a classic Italian-American favorite. Any leftovers could be used for meatball sandwiches.
Ingredients
1/4 cup plain breadcrumbs
1/4 cup dry red wine
1 pound ground beef
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/4 cup freshly-grated parmesan cheese
1/2 small onion, minced
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried mustard
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 clove garlic, halved lengthwise
1 26 oz. carton Pomi strained tomatoes
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon fresh basil, torn into pieces
Preparation
Set Global Sun Oven out to preheat.
Soak breadcrumbs in wine. In a large bowl combine breadcrumb wine mixture with the next 6 ingredients, beef through dried mustard. Form 12 meatballs.
Combine olive oil and halved garlic clove in a dark roasting pan with a lid. Place in GSO and cook until garlic begins to turn brown, about 10 minutes. Remove pan from GSO, add meatballs. Mix salt into strained tomatoes and pour over meatballs, cover and return pan to GSO. Cook until meatballs are cooked through, about 40 minutes or until glass door begins to steam up.
Makes serves 4 to 6
Solar Pasta Sauce
I don’t know why anyone buys pre-made pasta sauce. My best guess is that they have the mistaken idea that it is complicated to make and has to cook for hours. This may be true of bolognese, a sauce that needs to simmer for three hours and for which there are as many recipes as there are cooks, but ‘pasta al sugo di pomodoro e basilico’ (pasta with tomato and basil sauce) is so easy to make that even the biggest Italian mamma’s boys, the ones that still live with their parents at 30 and have never made a bed or done a load of laundry in their lives, can pull it off.
The sauce consists of five ingredients, including the salt, and is ready in twenty minutes. In the GSO in may take a little longer, say 30 minutes, but on the plus side you won’t have tomato splatter to clean up.
Sugo al Pomodoro
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled, cut in half lengthwise, sprout removed
3 cups imported Italian canned tomatoes* (strained, whole, or crushed)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, torn into 1/2 inch pieces
Preparation
Set Global Sun Oven out to preheat.
Place oil and garlic in a lightweight pot and place in GSO. When the garlic starts to turn a pale golden color, after approx. 10 minutes, stir in the tomatoes (with their juice and coarsely chopped if using whole tomatoes) and the salt. Cover the pot with a dark tea towel. Cook until the tomatoes have separated from the oil, 20 – 30 minutes. Remove from GSO. Stir in basil.
Makes enough sauce for 1 pound of dry pasta.
Serve over cooked pasta with freshly grated parmesan cheese.
*Look for a brand of tomatoes that contain only one ingredient – tomatoes. No salt, no citric acid, no seasonings. I’ve never found a non-Italian brand that has none of these and even some of the Italian brands are guilty of unwanted additions, so read the label carefully. Pomì, sold in cartons, is good and available in most U.S. supermarkets.
Italian Bean Soup from the Global Sun Oven
If you made the lamb shanks and beans from yesterday’s post you can use the reserved liquid, which I’m sure you refrigerated overnight, to make Pasta Fagioli. If not you can use any kind of broth you have on hand. This soup can be made entirely in the Global Sun Oven if you’re going to eat it right away, if not you may have to do the final step – cooking the pasta in the soup – on the stove to keep the pasta from getting soggy.
Pasta e Fagioli
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 leek, white and light green parts only, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely chopped
1 14 oz can petite diced tomatoes
reserved liquid from lamb shanks and beans, fat removed, plus additional water to make 4 cups total, or 4 cups broth
1 14 oz can cannellini beans, drained (or 2 cups left over beans for lamb shank recipe)
1 cup short pasta, ditalini, shells, or gobetti
1 tablespoon freshly chopped rosemary
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
freshly grated parmesan cheese
Preparation
Set Global Sun Oven® out to preheat
Combine olive oil, leek, garlic, carrot, and tomatoes in a large dutch oven. Cover, place in GSO and cook until vegetables soften, approx. 40 minutes. Add reserved liquid or broth and beans and continue cooking in GSO until heated through and simmering. Stir in pasta and cook until ‘al dente’, 10 to 20 minutes depending on type of pasta used.
Remove from GSO, stir in rosemary and balsamic vinegar. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls. Flavor with a drizzle of olive oil and grated cheese.
Make 4 servings
Puttanesca Pasta Sauce
Puttanesca is a classic Italian pasta sauce. It’s easy to make and very tasty. As always you can do the sauteing either in the Sun Oven or on the stove, whichever you prefer. The ingredients are olive oil, minced garlic, anchovy paste, strained tomatoes, olives, capers, crushed red pepper, and freshly chopped parsley. So many people are turned off by anchovies and capers, but they really add depth of flavor, and in this sauce the anchovy paste is dissolved in the oil and the capers are minced, if you don’t tell anyone they won’t know they’re there.
Puttanesca Pasta Sauce
2 Tbs olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp anchovy paste
3 cups strained tomatoes, preferably Pomì
1/2 cup Kalamata olives, pitted, roughly chopped
1 1/2 Tbs drained capers, finely chopped
1/2 tsp dried crushed red pepper
1/4 cup freshly chopped flat leaf parsley
Put oil, garlic and anchovy paste in a a dark enameled pot and place in Sun Oven. Sauté until garlic is fragrant. Add strained tomatoes, olives, capers, crushed red pepper. Cover and simmer in Sun Oven for approx. 40 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in chopped parsley. Serve over pasta with freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese.
If you want your meal to be completely solar cooked there is a method for cooking pasta in the Sun Oven. It works best with shapes like penne or cavatappi. Use one cup of water for each cup of uncooked pasta. Combine the water and pasta with a dash of salt in a light weight, dark pot with a lid. The pasta is ready when it has absorbed all the water. I’ve only done this once, it’s a little too hard to tell when the pasta is ready for my liking. However, it is nice to know that if I should find myself in a situation where it is necessary to conserve both fuel and water I’d be able to enjoy a decent bowl of pasta.
