New Recipe #11: Pasta primavera salad

Before I launch into my newest foray for the quest for delicious pasta salads, I offer a gentle reminder to anyone who is interested in trading out accessories to check out the details on the Great Accessories Swap, conceived by the lovely Erin. What’s better than getting new fun jewelry? Oh, I know! It’s getting new fun jewelry and getting rid of things you don’t wear — all for free!

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The most recent experiment in my effort to find new pasta salads (or, “summer casseroles,” as we like to say) was a pasta primavera salad, recipe courtesy of Deb. In short, this salad is a winner. The recipe, though seemingly complicated at my first glance, boils down to four steps:

1. Cook pasta, mix with onion and olive oil.
2. Blanch peas, shock in ice water.
3. Chop up everything else.
4. Mix.

Ta-da! Four steps and you’ve got a lovely, delicious salad for your dinner needs. Even better, you’ve created a “one-pot meal,” so to speak, because the salad is a balanced combination of carbohydrates and vegetables, with a bit of protein thrown in. Heck, if you want to make it vegetarian, omit the proscuitto, and I’m sure it’ll be delicious. Just toss a bit more salt in there to make up for the lack of, uh, salted meat. I made up a batch last week, and then we ate it for a pre-climbing meal the next day. Light but still filling, it gave us energy without weighing us down. We declared it a keeper, and this recipe has a place of prominence in its very own plastic sleeve in the recipe binder, under “Soups and Sides.”

That said, I made a few small modifications when I tried out this recipe. When comparing my photos of the salad to Deb’s, it will be obvious that I did not use fettuccine, substituting tri-color rotini instead. JG and I both prefer what we call “stabby pasta” (i.e. short-cut pasta) to “twirly pasta,” and that may or may not be related to my tendency to spatter sauce all over myself while twirling recalcitrant strands. So, for us, the rotini worked out just fine, and I liked how colorful it was. Besides, our grocery store doesn’t carry green fettuccine, so what was I to do? Please also excuse the fact that absolutely nothing is julienned, as the recipe states; I am too attached to my fingertips to attempt anything crazy like that. In the herbage department, I used rosemary because we had it on hand. It was delicious, but I think I’d like to toss in some chives next time, as well. I used apple cider vinegar because we didn’t have any of the raspberry variety. Oh, and I forgot the olives. Darn.

I know, did I follow the recipe at all? But, hey! The salad turned out great, regardless of my perhaps-ill-advised finagling. Also:

• Be warned that the recipe as listed makes a whole heck of a lot of salad. My biggest mixing bowl could not contain the bounds of the growing pile of foodstuffs that I had to somehow mix without spilling it all over my counters. I know already that our love of this salad will not outlast the shelf life of the leftovers in the fridge, and that’s a little sad. I think I’ll save this dish for a crowd of at least 8, if not 12, people or halve it for JG and me.
• A lot of the bulk was attributed to the snow peas and sugar snap peas: over a pound, in total. I will cut the snow peas entirely next time, which will also drastically decrease the cost of the ingredients.
• The recipe calls for Parmesan cheese, but JG tossed in a bit of feta that we had lying around, and it was a nice addition. I will definitely incorporate feta from the start, but that will affect the salt content, I think.

The moral of the story is: go forth and make this pasta salad. It’s tasty, pretty, and simple, just how warm-weather eats should be.