It’s cannin’ season, and that means tomato sauce is on the menu. I’ve been making my share of marinara with the typical weekend tomato haul, and I know that pomodoro is very much in style. However, this week I’m proposing a brief respite from ragu-madness, wherein you might do something different with your weeknight pasta: not cook at all.
To be sure, the pasta itself will be cooked — no way around that, as of yet. But aside from boiling a pot of water, these recipes are all accomplished without a single flame. They both rely on one of my favorite no-cooking cooking methods for vegetables: salting them for hours, letting the flavor-rich liquid drain out, and using that juice in all sorts of ways. I do this frequently for vinaigrettes, salting the water out of a bunch of cherry tomatoes or cucumbers and then emulsifying it with mustard or yogurt.
This is a similar approach, in which peak vegetables are marinated and tossed with pasta; the natural liquid forms the base of a light sauce that gets a bit thickened with the pasta’s starch. All of this is done in a bowl, not over the stove, and they’re designed to be eaten at room temperature. This is, I assure you, not pasta salad! (No offense to pasta salad, which is very good.)
The first dish, cu l’agghia, is a Sicilian specialty that I got very into last summer. It features the best quality canned tuna you can find (i.e. Ortiz, Tonnino, or As do Mar); very ripe and very fresh tomatoes, perhaps a Campari, celebrity, or even beefsteak variety; basil and a few smashed garlic cloves; and finally, a generous amount of roasted and chopped nuts (traditionally almonds, but I like pistachios). The tomatoes are sliced and combined with the tuna and its oil, along with the basil and garlic, and left to sit for a few hours or overnight in the fridge. The resulting tomato-tuna slurry is stirred into just-boiled pasta, and topped with copious basil, pistachios, and fried breadcrumbs.
The second is a bit simpler: roughly cubed zucchini are marinated overnight in salt, olive oil, garlic, and a touch of red wine vinegar, and the whole lot is tossed with pasta, torn mozzarella, a few cherry tomatoes and lots of herbs.
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