Opinion – Recipes from Marcão: Camp pasta uses tomato sauce that doesn’t need to be fired

I dubbed this recipe “camp noodles” because it can be made even in the poor conditions of a camping site. The sauce does not need to be cooked, so just a pan and a stove burner (or a stove) will easily solve the stoppage.

If you, like me, are allergic to sleeping in a tent, you don’t need to worry: the recipe is good in any situation, it’s also tasty when it’s made in a kitchen equipped with a six-burner stove.

The base of the cold sauce is good fresh and ripe tomatoes – the less you interfere with the ingredient (here the interference is minimal), the more its qualities and defects appear.

Moreover, the recipe is completely customizable to the taste of the customer. You can add anything raw or canned: asparagus, artichokes, onions, sardines, tuna, raw ham.

I made it with garlic, black olives, capers, buffalo mozzarella, olive oil and basil. The combination of flavors pleases me, I had the olives and capers, and the mozzarella was on sale at the market.

Despite being raw, it is not enough to mix everything in a bowl to have a sauce. Every recipe has its tricks.

Raw sauce doesn’t require any specific talent, just patience. You should leave it in a sieve for about an hour, until the tomato and mozzarella have released most of their water. Otherwise, a small pool will form at the bottom of the noodle dish.

What makes the tomato “sweat” is the salt – which can be added or contained in the ingredients. As I used olives and capers, both very salty, I didn’t add tomatoes at the beginning.

Leave the basil for finishing, as it oxidizes and darkens. Same thing with olive oil: it will run through the sieve if you use it at the beginning of the preparation.

CAMPING Noodles

Yield: 2 servings

Difficulty: easy

Ingredients

• 400 g ripe tomatoes, with skin and seeds, chopped
• 1 finely chopped garlic clove
• 10 black olives, pitted and chopped
• 1 teaspoon chopped capers
• 200 g fresh buffalo mozzarella, drained and chopped
• 250 g dry pasta
• Salt, black pepper, basil, olive oil and grated cheese to taste

Way of doing

1 – Mix the tomatoes, garlic, olives, capers and mozzarella. Leave in a sieve for at least an hour, stirring occasionally to lose liquid;

2 – Cook the pasta according to the package instructions;

3 – Transfer the sauce to a platter. Adjust salt and season with kingdom pepper, basil and olive oil;

4 – Drain the pasta and mix it with the sauce. Serve with grated cheese separately.