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Archive for pasta
August 8, 2010 at 11:14 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
See, this isn’t called “Cheesy Chicken Pasta,” it’s Queso Chicken Pasta. That means it’s Mexican food that had a baby with a baked pasta dish. And a delicious baby it is.
It’s from Evil Shenanigans, which are the best kind of shenanigans. I’m pretty sure the only thing I changed was that I used a chipotle pepper instead of a jalapeno (because that’s what I had on hand, and also anything smoky is more delicious than not-smoky) – that and halving it so it was suitable for two people and a bit of leftovers, rather than two people and enough leftovers for a small army.
Queso Chicken Pasta
Ingredients
enough pasta for 2 people
1 tsp vegetable oil
1 small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 a chipotle in adobo (seeds scraped out because I’m a wuss… leave them in if you’re more B.A. than me), minced
1/4 tsp cumin
a few coriander seeds, maybe cracked under the flat of a knife blade if you can keep them from rolling long enough
1/2 tbsp flour
2/3 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbsp cream cheese – which is, helpfully, just about the amount in one of those single-serving packets you can buy
3 oz “nacho taco” shredded cheese blend
1/4 cup Ro-Tel tomatoes (I know, this is a pain – it’s about half a small can, if I remember correctly), drained
1 cup cooked chicked, shredded
Method
Preheat the oven to 350.
Cook the pasta 2 minutes less than the package dictates.
Drain it and set it aside.
Spray a smallish casserole dish with cooking spray.
Get a pot and heat the oil in it over medium heat.
Throw in the onion, garlic, and chipotle and saute for 3 minutes.
Add in the cumin, coriander, and salt, and continue sauteeing for another 2 minutes.
Next, add the flour and cook, stirring, for another 3 minutes, making sure that all the flour is incorporated.
Pour the milk in, slowly, whisking the whole time, until smooth.
Simmer the mixture until thickened.
Turn off the heat (but I left it on the same element, so some residual heat is all well and good).
Whisk in the cream cheese and 2/3 of the shredded cheese, until anything of a cheese nature is melted.
Stir in the tomatoes.
Pour your pasta (remember your pasta? You had some, a long time ago) into the casserole dish.
Add the sauce and the chicken, and mix everything so that it’s all nicely coated.
Top with the remaining shredded cheese.
Bake for 20 – 30 minutes, or until bubbly and melty and glorious.
May 23, 2010 at 7:46 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
This is one of those recipes that makes your house smell really good. I mean, it tastes good too, that should be obvious, but you have to roast some garlic and tomatoes, and that is something scented-candle companies should look into, because I bet they’d make a fortune. Except that having one of those candles going would kind of get everyone mad at you. Think about it. Someone would come into your house and smell that, and think you’ve got something delicious cooking up for them, and then when you pull out whatever non-roasting-garlic-and-tomatoes thing you have instead (which I’m sure is still good, but if you were cooking something that already smelled of this, you wouldn’t need a candle, now, would you?) they couldn’t help but be disappointed. So maybe I’m not a genius of the candle industry. Whatever. Moving on.
I got the recipe from Joelen’s Culinary Adventures, which, sidebar, it’s easy to get the wrong idea when you see the “joelens” username on the Foodgawker picture, or even if you’re just looking at the URL, because you might think it’s a dude who likes to take pictures: Joe Lens. It’s not. If you click on the link you can discover your error right away, because she helpfully provides her picture to set right the constantly baffled (i.e. me). I understand that this is a take on a restaurant favourite. Having never been to the restaurant in question, I really couldn’t say how it compares – I’d definitely order it in a restaurant, though! Of course, not having the original to go on, I felt pretty free to make changes and substitutions. Sadly, one of these changes was ditching the mushrooms. I can disguise peppers pretty easily, but it’s hard to hide a mushroom without making a mushy horror out of the thing. I bet it would have been mind-blowing with them in. I was also unable to get any sundried tomatoes – we were having kind of a lousy trip to the grocery store, and I didn’t want to draw attention to my expensive and possibly objectionable food tastes by making a detour over to the sundried tomato aisle (hahaha. I mean “the sundried tomato square foot of shelf space”). So instead, I bought a regular tomato, and while I didn’t have all day to dry it in the oven, or a food dehydrator to do it in seconds, I did roast it until it was moderately wrinkly and 100% delicious, so while my version is probably a bit milder-tasting than the original, it’s still very good – and I always think I like sundried tomatoes more than I actually do, anyway. I get all excited about them and then I realize that I don’t honestly love them all that much… once I’ve bitten into one.
Pasta Milano
Ingredients
3 slices bacon
about 1 person’s worth of chicken (I used 2 thin little breast cutlets), diced
4 cloves garlic
1 tomato, cut into 8ths
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup half and half
enough farfalle for 2 people
parmesan cheese – you might need 1 cup or you might need less, but have at least a cup on hand just in case
basil
Method
Preheat oven to 450.
With them still in their skins, chop the tops off the garlic cloves so a bit of the clove itself is exposed.
Arrange the garlic cloves and the tomato pieces on a baking sheet and drizzle some olive oil on them. I also cranked a little salt onto the tomatoes to draw the liquid out a little more.
Roast for 10 – 15 minutes.
Turn the things so that a different face of them is touching the pan.
Put them back in for another 10ish minutes.
Meanwhile, or whatever, cook the bacon.
When it’s done, take it out to drain on a paper towel.
Drain off most of the bacon grease from the pan, just leaving enough to cook the chicken in.
I think you’ll have guessed what comes next – cook the chicken in the bacon-greased pan.
Take the chicken out when it’s cooked – you can put it with the bacon. By the way, at some point, break the bacon up into bits.
Don’t turn the pan off when you take the chicken out, though – just toss the garlic (squeezed out of its papery husks, of course), tomatoes, and chicken stock in there and give it a nice old stir to deglaze the pan and smash up the garlic and tomatoes a bit.
Bring to a boil.
Turn it down to a simmer and let it go for 10 minutes.
Stir in the half-and-half.
Bring it back up to a boil again.
At some point in the meanwhile, cook the pasta according to package directions.
Once both the sauce and pasta are done, mix the two together in a baking dish.
Sprinkle the parmesan cheese over the top.
Garnish with basil.
Sling it into the oven for 5 – 7 minutes or until the cheese is melty and the sauce is bubbling.
March 21, 2010 at 8:20 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
Matt and I have an ideological disagreement over ravioli. He feels that the only true filling for them is cheese; specifically, ricotta cheese (which I don’t like, because, in sufficient quantities, it makes me gag). I was used to meat ones, when I was little. He was referring to the kind you purchase in the frozen section, which wasn’t something I was familiar with. This recipe said to use frozen ravioli, but meat was the preferred filling. Ha! They do exist! Buuuut not here. All I could find was the ricotta kind. So I kind of soldiered through this recipe, and the fairly dominant flavours of the sauce masked the ricotta mostly, and the texture wasn’t as noticeable as it sometimes is. I’d still rather try it with meat, because I feel that that would fit better thematically, and where I got the recipe, Mommy I’m Hungry, recommended meat anyway. So there… or whatever. I win. Or perhaps lose.
Also, this is quick as hell, and easy, and I don’t really care that it uses mostly pre-made stuff. If you have homemade stuff hanging around, or you’ve got that kind of time, go nuts on it.
Mexican Ravioli
Ingredients
1 25-oz package frozen ravioli (meat if possible! Yeah! GO MEAT!!)
1 10-oz can enchilada sauce (which apparently comes in colours other than red… well, not around here it doesn’t!)
8 oz salsa
one of those bags of “Mexican blend” cheese – the original recipe called for the whole bag, but since I made this in a big pot instead of a skillet, there was less surface area and I didn’t wind up using the whole thing. Maybe 2/3 to 3/4 of a bag.
sliced black olives for garnish
Method
Cook the ravioli according to package directions.
Drain and set aside.
In the same pot – I mean, it’s big enough to hold all the ravioli at once, you already know that from cooking them, so obviously it’s the right size, why get another one dirty? – mix the enchilada sauce and salsa over medium heat until warmed through.
Stir in ravioli (gently!).
Cover with cheese and sprinkle with olives.
Slap a lid on that pot and lower the heat.
Let cook for 3 – 4 minutes or until the cheese is all melty.
February 6, 2010 at 8:55 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
Ok, I usually say “green onions,” instead of “scallions,” but “Ginger-Green-Onion” does not exactly roll off the tongue. This sauce… rolls onto it. That is a totally meaningless statement, but my point is that it’s pretty delicious. I got it from Almost Bourdain (P.S., I wish I was almost Bourdain), who, in turn, got it from the Momofuku cookbook, apparently. I told Matt this was from Momofuku, and he said “hey, same to you, buddy.”
I made a change; I substituted half of the regular oil with sesame oil, for two reasons: 1, I am not that interested in having a bunch of plain, flavourless oil in a sauce, and 2, I love sesame oil. I’ve seen other, non-Momofuku, recipes for this sauce, and several of them had the sesame oil in. I also edited it for size.
Ginger-Scallion Noodles
Ingredients
1 1/4 cups green onions, chopped (about half a bunch)
1/4 cup finely minced ginger – I threw mine in the food processor, which I can heartily recommend
1 tbsp some kind of flavourless oil
1 tbsp sesame oil
3/4 tsp soy sauce
generous 1/4 tsp white wine vinegar
1/4 tsp, or more according to your taste, salt
an appropriate quantity of noodles
Method
Cook the noodles according to package instructions.
Mix everything else together.
The original recipe said it’s best if you let the sauce sit for 15 – 20 minutes before using it, and I wound up doing that, but not deliberately. Matt just got home a little later than I thought he would. So you can put it on the noodles straight away, or not. It’s probably delicious either way.
And guess what! Adopt-a-Blogger 4 just got under way, and this year I’m being a mentor, if you can believe such a thing. Like I have anything helpful to say… ha ha haaa, Crystal (my mentee!), you got a dud! Well, I hope I’m not a total dud, anyway. Stay tuned for a more substantial post about her later, once we know each other a little more.
January 16, 2010 at 11:16 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
Matt objects to baked macaroni and cheese. I don’t, but I also don’t care all that much. If I don’t get to eat that kind, it’s fine. So finding good stovetop recipes is a plus for me, because most of the cool-looking or particularly delicious ones out there are oven-baked. And I know I’m Canadian and am therefore supposed to have a weird affinity for Kraft Dinner (hey, hey Americans, keep your pants on, it’s different from the American version, which is even named differently, “Kraft Macaroni and Cheese”), and I do, but liking something lo-fi like that does not prevent me from liking nice versions of the same thing.
I saw this recipe on Life’s Ambrosia, and maybe the number-one thing that made me want to save it immediately was that one of the three cheeses was Havarti. Loooove Havarti. In fact – and any high school friends reading this can confirm – during the nice weather parts of the year, a bunch of us routinely went down to the beach on a Friday afternoon with a slab of (supermarket) focaccia bread and some Havarti, and sand got in it but we didn’t care. We felt like classy … um… well, if you know me, you know what I was going to say here. Hi, people for whom I am keeping this blog PG-13! Indeed, after I made the macaroni and cheese and had most of the hunk of Havarti left over, I went to When Pigs Fly bakery and got some of this bread (which they have as a ciabatta on their website, but what I got was definitely a focaccia) to eat with it.
Um, where was I? Oh, right, cheeses… so yeah, the third cheese was Gruyere, and I thought that would be completely easy to find, but the grocery store didn’t have it! And I realize our grocery store isn’t super swankypants and I shouldn’t expect fancy cheese, but it is an allegedly Super Stop & Shop, so it has a cheese department. If you have a cheese department, it is not unreasonable to think it would be likely to have Gruyere, which isn’t even that out-there as cheeses go. But it did not. So we used provolone instead, which led to meatball subs later on in the week… not a bad trade-off, ultimately.
3-Cheese Macaroni and Cheese
Ingredients
1 cup dry macaroni
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup grated cheddar cheese
1/4 cup grated (or just chopped up really small – ours was sliced, and it’s impossible to grate a slice of cheese) provolone
1/4 cup finely chopped Havarti – who can grate a soft cheese like that, anyway?
1/2 tsp seasoning salt
a few hearty cranks of pepper
1 green onion, chopped
Method
Cook pasta according to package directions.
Take it out to drain, and leave it in the strainer while you do the next stuff.
In the same pot, melt the butter over medium heat.
Whisk in the flour until smooth.
Let it cook for 1 minute to get that raw flour taste out.
Whisk in the milk.
Bring to a simmer but not a real boil.
Dump in all the cheeses.
Stir until they are all melted.
Add salt and pepper.
Stir in the macaroni.
Cook 5 minutes.
Stir in the green onions.
Remove from the heat and let stand 5 minutes before serving.
November 14, 2009 at 6:56 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
Last night I made this dish, which I found at Annie’s Eats. Now, she made it because she was inspired by a dish of the same name at the Cheesecake Factory. I’ve never been to a Cheesecake Factory, for three reasons:
1) I don’t like going to chain restaurants.
2) I don’t like cheesecake.
3) Why would you want to eat in a food factory? That’s just not appetizing.
But I wasn’t about to begrudge the recipe based on what it was mimicking. Obviously if a chain restaurant has a good idea, it’s still a good idea – and it’s a better idea if you make it at home, in your non-factory kitchen, putting in what you like and taking out what you don’t like, and serving as much or as little food as your needs dictate. Cheaper, too, obviously.
A large part of this dish is that there are bell peppers in it. To me, this is a plus; to Matt, a minus. He doesn’t mind picking them out or eating around them, but he doesn’t like it when they flavour up the whole sauce, for instance, because there’s no picking that out. So what I proposed to do was to saute the peppers with the onions, per the recipe, but then pick out all the peppers and just add them back in to my portion. He generously let me leave a few in, because I couldn’t pick them out fast enough when it was time, but I could tell he’d have rathered I didn’t. Probably the only thing that saved this dish in his mind was that it was liberally festooned with Tony’s. For me, these two things, AND the creamy sauce (another minus for Matt, sort of) are all pluses. So I loved it. Him, probably not so much.
I cut it down further, in some of the measurements, than Annie’s already-cut-down recipe. This made enough for the two of us. There’s a me-sized portion in the fridge, too.
Louisiana Chicken Pasta
Ingredients
1 chicken breast, sliced
salt and pepper
creole seasoning (seriously, Tony’s)
enough pasta for 2 people – I used shells
1/2 tbsp butter
1 1/2 tsp olive oil
1/2 a red pepper, chopped coarsely
1/2 a green pepper (or use a freakishly small whole one, like I did), chopped coarsely
1/2 a small red onion – seriously, the original recipe called for 1/4 cup, and I thought I was halving things, but that came out to more than 1/4 cup! You really don’t need much.
1/4 tsp salt
pepper to taste
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp cayenne powder
1/2 tsp creole seasoning
3/4 cup light cream
1 1/2 tsp corn starch
1 1/2 tsp water
2 green onions, chopped
Method
Heat a splash of olive oil in a pan over medium heat.
Throw your chicken pieces in and season them with salt, pepper, and creole seasoning.
Cook through.
Remove to a plate for later. You’re going to keep using the pan, though, so don’t toss it in the sink.
Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to package directions. If it finishes before you’re done the rest of the stuff, just drain and set it aside.
Add the butter and olive oil to the chicken pan and heat until the butter is melted.
Dump in the peppers and onion and season them with salt, pepper, garlic, cayenne, and creole seasoning.
Saute until tender, about 6 – 8 minutes.
Add the cream, and it wouldn’t hurt to scrape up any delicious crusty business on the pan.
Mix the corn starch and water together in a small glass or bowl.
Stir this mixture into the simmering sauce.
When the sauce is thickened, add the chicken and pasta, and stir to coat everything.
When everything is heated through, stir in the green onions and serve.
That’s my serving, with the peppers thrown back on it from having been kept aside.
November 4, 2009 at 5:56 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
I tried to make these macaroni and cheese cups the other night. Don’t get me wrong, it was tasty and everything, but they didn’t really stay in cup format after I took them out of the muffin pan, and I really had to change the proportions of stuff. The original amounts would have made about 2, maybe 3 cups, and Matt saw how much pasta was in the pot and said “You know I’m going to need more than one, right?” Yeah. He wound up having 4. I modified this a bit to make 6 cups. But the original one was a recipe to feed children, so it’s probably plenty for a kid. Oh, wait, I figured it out – she had cabbage and celery in there bulking it up, and I know my audience, so I had skipped that… that’s why. Ok. So if you want some veggies in your macaroni and cheese, throw in about half a cup and reduce the pasta accordingly.
Macaroni and Cheese Cups
Ingredients
enough pasta for 2 people – probably around 2.5 cups uncooked is what I used, maybe 3, I just sort of dumped pasta into the pot straight out of the box after it became clear that the first cup wasn’t going to be enough
1 1/4 cup grated cheese, whatever kind or kinds you want – I used sharp cheddar because that’s my favourite, but whatever floats your boat
2 tbsp flour
salt and pepper
a generous few shakes of your favourite seasonings or herbs (I used Tony’s, which my Baton-Rouge-dwelling friend brought us the last time she visited, and which Matt fell in love with)
Method
Cook the pasta according to package directions, and drain.
Preheat oven to 375.
Mix pasta, cheese, flour, and seasonings together.
Grease muffin cups.
Spoon pasta mixture into cups.
Bake for 15 – 20 minutes or until cheese starts to brown on top.
Allow to cool for 10 minutes so that the cups can set. Note: mine didn’t really.
Scoop them out carefully with a spoon and hope for the best.
October 3, 2009 at 9:10 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
I’ve never been to Berlin. I’ve never been to Germany at all, actually. I do have a cousin who lives there with her family, and a friend who went to Berlin and, by all accounts, had a wonderful time. This is the extent of my connection. Oh, and we also watched an episode of “No Reservations” where Bourdain goes to Berlin, during which time he had some currywurst from a street vendor. I flashed on the memory of that when I read this post on Bitchincamero. I couldn’t remember whether the genuine article had involved pasta or not; I figured it probably did just because it sounded like such a perfect match. Turns out that’s not so, but Germany, take note: combining pasta with your sausage and curry sauce is a genius idea whose time has come! Direct your thanks to Mel of Bitchincamero!
I think if I made this again, I’d up the curry factor and diminish the mustard. It was very delicious as it was, but the first thing you’d think of upon tasting it was mustard, not curry. I did third the recipe to serve 2, since the original served 6, although not having a 1/3 tsp measure, I had to fudge it a bit. I ditched the cabbage (even though that’s super-German, I know) because neither of us care for it. But this recipe got me to bite the bullet and buy some fennel seeds, because I love fennel and it had become a bit silly that I was ignoring recipes that contained it just because I didn’t want to buy any more spices.
Currywurst
Ingredients
enough pasta for 2 people – I used the remains of my large macaroni
3/4 tsp olive oil
1 shallot, minced
4 oz kielbasa (that’s a quarter of one of those U-shaped ones from the supermarket), sliced
something under 1/4 cup white wine
2 tsp mustard – I used Polish beer mustard
2 tsp tomato paste
let’s say a heaping 1/4 tsp fennel seeds
and let’s say a somewhat shy 1/4 tsp curry powder
1/3 cup of the pasta-cooking water
Method
Cook the pasta until just shy of al dente. Remember to save 1/3 cup of the water before you drain it.
While the pasta is cooking, heat the oil in a pan.
Add the shallots and saute until translucent, about 4 minutes.
Add the kielbasa slices and continue sauteeing until the slices are browned on both sides.
Remove the shallots and kielbasa from the pan.
Deglaze the pan with the wine.
Now throw everything but the noodles into the pan – the mustard, tomato paste, fennel seeds, curry powder, pasta water, and the shallots and kielbasa.
Stir until it forms a cohesive sauce.
Now chuck the noodles in and stir for about a minute, during which time the noodles will absorb most of the liquid.
September 20, 2009 at 11:51 pm · Filed under food, meals, pasta
This is a Sicilian variation on pesto; it’s from a town called Trapani, about which you can learn a great deal more at the site where I found the recipe, Sippity Sup. Mine is basically exactly the same except that I halved it, as I usually do for most recipes; I wound up using less oil (this may have had something to do with the consistency of the finished product, but I was very happy with the outcome anyway); and I had two different types of pasta involved. What, we had less spaghetti than I thought we did, and I had large macaroni left over from the pasta salad, so I made up the difference with that. Judging by the original post and its discussion of the traditional pasta shape used in Trapani, I don’t think it’s that unreasonable.
So let’s talk about consistency. The original post refers to the ideal consistency as being a smooth, uniform paste and not too chunky. Well, mine was on the chunky side. I didn’t feel the need to add more olive oil than I did – the original tablespoon, and then another hearty drizzle. At that point, though, there wasn’t supposed to be any more processing, so I guess it wouldn’t make a difference. I could have just whizzed it more than the recommended 10 – 12 times – I did, in fact – but I mean I could have kept at it until it was chunkless, but I didn’t see that making any difference at first, so I gave up. That’s probably a damning indictment of my character. Oh well.
Oh, one other thing? This is delicious.
Pasta Pesto Trapanese
Ingredients
enough pasta for 2 people
about 1 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes, or 3/4 of one of those little plastic containers
7 or 8 large basil leaves, or whatever you find the equivalent might be if your basil leaves aren’t large (like for me)
1 clove garlic
1/4 cup almonds, lightly toasted
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp salt
let’s say 2 tbsp olive oil, but more if you so wish
a generous 1/4 cup parmesan
more salt and pepper, to taste
Method
Put the tomatoes, basil, garlic, almonds, red pepper flakes, salt, and 1 tbsp of the olive oil in a food processor and give it about 10 – 12 presses of the button, or more if you want it creamier. Basically make it go until you are satisfied with the consistency.
I didn’t take mine out and put it in a serving bowl since this was not a dinner party, this was just having dinner. What I did was just take the blade out of the food processor and finish the mixing in that bowl, with a spoon. So add in another glug of olive oil, however much you feel it needs, and the cheese, and stir to combine.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
Now put the water on for the pasta. You’d think it would be more efficient to do that at the start and make the sauce while the water boils or the pasta cooks, and it would, but the original recipe said that this extra time the sauce spends sitting allows the flavours to meld, and who am I to argue? They definitely melded. I wasn’t above tasting some right when it was just made, though, and it was pretty good from the get-go, so if you’re in a hurry, put the pasta on first.
Cook the pasta according to package directions.
Drain the pasta, then throw it back in the pot.
Toss the sauce in the pot with the noodles until well coated.
Serve with more parmesan cheese.
August 16, 2009 at 11:43 pm · Filed under food, pasta, side dishes/appetizers
A while ago, Culinary Cory posted this recipe for pasta salad with pesto and peas. Last weekend, I made it for “craft services” at Matt’s movie. I had originally thought that it would be more or less the main dish – I mean, I’d eat it for lunch and call it a lunch – and so I wouldn’t have to cut down the recipe at all, because we’d have several people here and they’d all be chowing down on it. But then Matt was like “We have a whole bunch of hot Italian sausages in our freezer” and went to the store for buns. I sauteed a bunch of peppers and onions, and the pasta salad was relegated to side-dish status. Alas. The sausages were really good, though, and everyone acted like they were the best sausages they’d ever eaten. In fact, last night, we were out celebrating the birthday of the lead actress, a friend of mine, and when her father heard that Matt’s actors were paid in sausages, he immediately wanted to sign up. But he did eventually allow as he’d have some pasta salad too. Which was a wise choice on his part, because it’s really good. There was so much left over and I’ve been eating it all week, but I don’t care, it’s delicious. Pesto is always great, the peas make a nice little snap and juiciness, and the Greek yogurt gives it a nice tang.
Triple-P Salad
Ingredients
14 oz, more or less, pasta of a shape appropriate to pasta salad – I used up the leftover penne from the sausage and penne bake, and made up the rest with “large macaroni,” because it was what was on sale
1 1/3 cup defrosted frozen peas
1/2 cup pine nuts, toasted – mine were probably a little under-toasted, because my toaster oven is kind of overzealous in a really sudden way: one minute it’ll be not really done at all, the next it’ll be burnt, so unless you’re really hovering over it, you’re going to have dodgy toasting
1/4 cup grated parmesan
3 tbsp pesto (I always just make my own)
the juice of half a lemon
1 5-oz container plain Greek yogurt
1/3 cup mayonnaise
Method
Cook the pasta according to the package directions.
Meanwhile, whisk together the mayo, Greek yogurt, lemon juice, and pesto until well combined.
When the pasta is done, drain it and rinse with cold water. I KNOW, but pasta salad is different from regular pasta, and the starch on the noodles that would help sauce adhere to hot pasta will just result in a big intractable lump in this case. So rinse and drain.
Put the pasta in a big bowl (seriously, a big bowl) and add the peas, parmesan, and pine nuts… which makes this actually a 5-P salad, really. We looooove alliteration!
Now stir in the dressing until everything is nicely coated.
One thing to bear in mind is that if you make it ahead, as I did, and store it in the fridge, the dressing will be much more solid when you take it out. And everything will want a good stir. It doesn’t taste weird or anything, but it won’t look quite right. It is, though.
In other news, tonight I made the delicious chicken patties from Soupbelly. My photo was completely unsalvageable, so this is all you’re getting – a link and my confirmation that they were, indeed, fantastic. We ate them with rice and I occasionally dunked a piece in some soy sauce. And if you can believe it or not, considering it’s me we’re talking about here, they actually looked just like the ones in the original post’s photos! Seriously. That’s what mine looked like, minus the bed of greens. Don’t worry, I’m not getting a big head or something, but if that’s what they’re supposed to look like, then mine actually came out perfectly.
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