Insalata Caprese (or, not your average campground lunch)
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
Who says you can only eat hot dogs?
This camping lunch came about almost totally by accident. I never would have thought to pack it if I hadn’t been dying for a chance to use a super yummy new ingredient I found at the grocery store.
But first…let’s back up.
I love fresh tomatoes.
I really love fresh mozzarella.
I ADORE balsamic vinegar.
Quick and easy (and amazingly yummy) camping lunch
A few weeks ago, I’d spent some time in the kitchen laboriously trying to reduce balsamic vinegar (yum!) to a glaze. It took forever and the finished product, while yummy…just didn’t cut the mustard.
The next day while browsing through the balsamic vinegars at my local Giant Eagle, I stumbled upon a thing of great beauty.
There on the top shelf it sat…a beautiful glass bottle of balsamic glaze! Just $4.99 for a really nice size bottle. I couldn’t resist! I had to take it home.
Of course that was just two days before our next camping trip.
No time to use it before we left?
No fair.
That’s when I realized there was absolutely zero reason I couldn’t take it along with us and make up something yummy for us to eat with it.
So I headed back to the produce department, picked up a ball of fresh mozzarella, stopped by the produce department for a nice locally grown heirloom tomato. Then I stopped and picked up a bag of mixed baby greens.
When I got home, I packed it all up, pulled out a 2oz salad dressing bottle from my bento gear and filled it up with extra virgin olive oil. Then I headed out back and picked about two dozen large basil leaves from my herb pots.
When it came time for lunch on Saturday, I spread the mixed greens across two plates, sliced up my tomato, sliced up the mozzarella and pulled out my basil. Then I gently layered tomato, mozzarella, basil, tomato, mozzarella, basil until I ran out. I drizzled about 1 oz of the olive oil over each salad, then went back and poured some of the balsamic glaze.
Total calorie count on this meal was around 350, and it was VERY hardy. Plenty of protein from the cheese and the balsamic glaze adds a ton of flavor without really adding any calories. Not sure how good this would be with typical store bought tomatoes, but if you can pick up some freshly grown ones at a farmer’s market or from your own back yard, this is one killer camping recipe.
tagged under: lunch