Super Easy Solar Pasta Fagioli

If you can find two tall, skinny, light weight, dark, metal pots that fit side by side in the Sun Oven snatch them up. I find this much more practical than stacking two pots when you want to cook two things at the same time. I found mine in a thrift store so unfortunately I cannot steer you to a place to purchase them.

Pasta e fagioli is a perfect example of a dish where side by side cookware comes in handy. One pot contains half a pound of mayocoba beans that were soaked overnight, drained, and put in one pot with enough water to cover them by about two inches. In the second pot is olive oil, a finely chopped onion, two finely chopped carrots, two stalks of celery also finely chopped, a minced clove, a garlic, one tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary, salt and a can of petite diced tomatoes.

I had a busy day today so I left the two pots simmering away in the Sun Oven while I went about my business. When I got home around three the beans were fully and the tomato base were fully cooked. I combined everything, including the bean's cooking liquid, into one large pot and put it back in the Sun Oven.

Now I had a dilemma. Do I finish the soup now or wait until after sundown and complete the soup on the stove? For a meal that was entirely solar cooked I'd have to puree some of the beans and add the pasta while the sun was still shining. That would have worked if we were planning on an early dinner but we still had quite a few things to do before we would eat. Cooking the pasta now to eat later was out of the question because it would have been soggy by the time we were ready to dine.

Of course I went for the better tasting option. When we were ready for dinner I pureed about two cups of the bean and vegetable mixture, returned it to the pot and brought everything to a boil - on the indoor electric stove. When the soup was boiling I added about one and a half cups of shell shaped pasta and cooked it for the time indicated on the package. When the pasta was ready, I removed the soup from the heat and seasoned it with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, chopped rosemary, freshly grated parmesan cheese, salt and pepper.

That's all we had for dinner - well that and a glass of wine - and we ate all of it.

Post Pi Day Pasta and Split Pea Soup from the Sun Oven

Our Pi Day get together was a success. We had enough food to feed an army and I forgot to take a picture of it. When everyone had gone home I was also too tired to update my blog. The solar cooked dishes were the two panfortes, the blueberry pie, and pulled pork that I made in the Sun Oven yesterday. That was only the beginning of the feast. Pretty much everyone brought a dish, most of which fit the Pi theme. We had two banquet tables covered in food. Needless to say, preparing more food was the last thing I wanted to do when I got up this morning. Somehow I managed to get a pot of split pea soup going. Not very exciting, pretty much my go to dish on days like today. I really wanted to make something new to blog about, but I didn't have the energy to come up with anything. 

Well, today was my lucky day. Right about the time I was taking the soup out of the Sun Oven I got a call from April. We were introduced to each other by Paul Munsen of Sun Ovens International. She is about to launch a Sun Oven rental business that sounds very promising. In the course of our conversation she told my how she cooks pasta in a Sun Oven, something I thought could not be done. Here's how she does it, just take equal parts of water and pasta and a little oil, put everything in a  dark lightweight pot and in no time you'll have pasta "al dente". I was amazed at the results. I didn't have any sauce on hand and no desire to make any so we ate it with butter and parmesan cheese. 

Solar Oven Pasta e Fagioli with Wine

Mayocoba beans are my new favorite. I had never heard of them, but they are a lot cheaper then the cannellini or cranberry beans I usually use. I decided to give them a try and was not disappointed. After soaking 1/2 lb. overnight I put them in the solar oven early this morning. By the time I got around to chopping the veggies for the soup's base the beans were cooked. If I had started the base at the same time as the beans the soup would have been ready by lunchtime but who wants to chop onions before breakfast? Once the base was done I combined everything in one pot, including the liquid the beans cooked in, and brought it to a slow boil to cook the pasta. All it needed was a touch of balsamic vinegar, a dusting of parmesan cheese, some chopped rosemary and a glass of wine.