It’s Farmer’s Market Season again — I love the summer — and I found a huge bushel of fresh peas. I love peas, freshly shucked and just blanched with a bit of butter. I made this quick pantry friendly meal (don’t most of us have spaghetti and parm in the house?) for dinner tonight. Absolutely delish!
Pasta
Here is a riff on both pasta salad and caprese, the tomato-mozzarella-basil salad that I eat normally when the local tomatoes come into season. I used mini-everything for this recipe: cherry tomatoes, perlini mozzarella and orecchiette pasta. Orecchiette meand “earlobe” which I think is just funny and somewhat appropriate.
Lemony Artichoke and Asparagus Pasta Salad
Pasta salad for a lot of people means mayonnaise. For me, that doesn’t always work well. I like going on picnics and I don’t want to have to worry about keeping my pasta salad cold (not to mention that it tastes better when it isn’t too cold). So this one has a Vinaigrette instead, which matches well with the artichoke hearts too.
So it’s soup. Just soup. Really not all that exciting.
But when something so simple turns out so amazing that you even surprise yourself, you know it’s good. It’s still chilly and damp here in Greater Boston these days (at least it’s not presently snowing!), so I decided to make some Veggie and Chicken Soup, and I threw in some Sacchetti pasta (which is tort of like tortellini, but prettier!). Even my dinner guest, who hasn’t had much of an appetite recently had seconds and even wanted to take some home to have for lunch the next day. I’d call that two thumbs up. Simple. Easy. Good. Soup.
Getting to be BBQ season here in the Northeast and it is the Fourth of July coming up so I thought that I would share one of my “Go To” side dishes. This pasta salad has to be one of the fastest ever to put together and is very neutral — no exotic flavors this time. I went for a little picnic out on one of the islands in Boston Harbor and snacked on this salad on the rocks.