Feeds 2 or so (depends on how hungry you are and how many noodles you use)
Time: ~5 minutes + however long it takes to get your water to a boil
Ingredients:
angel hair pasta
1 pkt. McCormick creamy garlic alfredo sauce mix
1 pkt. dried milk
1 tube Amore pesto paste
4 mozzarella cheese sticks
grated parmesan cheese
crushed red pepper
Hormel real bacon bits
Alessi garlic breadsticks
spice mix (see original post)
Gear:
titanium cooking pot
MSR pocket rocket stove
Light My Fire utensil
Step 1: Packing it in
Break the pasta in half and stick it in a zip-lock bag. I usually keep a quart-packet of dried milk for my morning oatmeal, so that’s already in the kit. Cheese sticks, sauce mix, and pesto tube are individually packaged. Use a snack-sized zip-lock baggie for your parmesan cheese, crushed red pepper, and bacon bits. The Alessi breadsticks are hard and will likely crumble during the hike. Take them out of the box and put ’em in a zip-lock baggie.
Step 2: Cooking
Dump the sauce mix, bacon bits, parmesan cheese, red pepper, and about three heaping spoons of powdered milk into about 2 or so cups of water. Squirt roughly two tablespoons of the pesto paste. Stir it up (don’t worry much about clumps, it’ll level out) and set it to boil. Stir constantly.
Once you have a good rolling bubble going, add the pasta. Reduce heat to a simmer and stir for 5 minutes. Take care not to let it stick to the pot. The starch in the pasta has a tendency here to make the sauce gummy. If it gets too thick, add some water and stir it in. The sauce will definitely thicken up later. Kill the heat after 5 minutes.
Quickly slice the 4 cheese sticks into half-inch chunks and stir it into the pasta. They’ll melt into gooey lumps of goodness while the dish cools enough to eat.
Season it to taste with red pepper and/or the spice mix, shake the breadstick crumbs onto the top. Dig in.
Step 3: Cleaning
When you’re finished, offer the pot to your buddy who is sitting across from you – glaring while trying to choke down his Insta-crap side dish as he is watching you savor this meal, eyes half-closed in gastronomic ecstasy. Maybe he’ll lick the pot clean for you if he doesn’t impale you with a titanium spork before you can offer. You could bring a few extra tortillas and use them to wipe out/sop up the sauce. Otherwise, just pour a little hot water into it and wipe it out. Or, maybe, you could offer to share with your buddy under the agreement that he who cooks does not have to clean.
Variations
The sauce mix only calls for 1 cup of milk – and since you’re using 2 cups of liquid for this recipe, I guess you could add two packets of mix if you really wanted it to be creamy. I’ve never tried it that way, though, so it might end up thick as a brick.
Be careful about adding too much pasta – it can have a tendency to clump together and not cook all through. You could cook the pasta separately and add it to the sauce later. In that case – only let the sauce boil for about 2 minutes before you take it off the heat. Still boil the noodles for 5 minutes. I prefer one-dish meals, though.