Farm family dinner, in the yurt: veggie pasta salad, and more salad on the side.
We got onto a serious kick of pasta salads with veggies last week, with family visiting. When meal planning, we asked ourselves a few times “is it weird if we do the pasta salad again?” and generally decided no, it was a great idea. That’s partly because every time it was a little bit different, and partly because it just felt like a great way to appreciate the waves of produce that were rolling in from the field in abundance. If you are a farm member, this is one of those use-it-all up meals to make the night before you fill your feed bag. It’s also a great way to pre-prep meals for your whole week; if you come home from market with an overflowing basket and worry that your market-morning enthusiasm will diminish during your busy week, try putting on some good music or audio book and spending a little time chopping and prepping for pasta salads during the week. You can store ingredients separately in airtight bowls or containers, or try mixing everything together but changing up your dressings for different meals throughout the week.
The basic directions:
1. Cook one of your favorite short-noodle type pastas according to package instructions, and run cold water over the pasta after straining, to cool it down. We've used penne, shells, and rotini spirals with good results. *Tip—we really this method of lightly cooking some of the vegetables, to avoid creating any additional dishes: when pasta is almost ready, toss chopped veggies into the boiling pasta pot for just the last 60-90 seconds, then drain and cool right along with the noodles, and you’re ready to start mixing in the other ingredients. We do this with big bunched greens, zucchini, garlic scapes, and sometimes carrots.
2. Chop any and every vegetable you have on hand that could conceivably be eaten in pasta salad. Stretch your imagination on what could be combined, and go beyond traditional pasta salad recipes. I haven’t get met anything I wouldn’t include—just chop it into whatever will make pleasant and logical bites, and either cook it first, or don’t. NOTE: we usually end up with about a 3:1 ratio of veggies to pasta. That’s key to making it a healthier meal option, and to using up your pile of produce!
3. Chop or prepare a protein option: chilled cooked beans (garbanzo and kidney beans hold up especially well in the tossing), hard boiled eggs, or a diced meat.
4. Combine all ingredients, and toss with a favorite salad dressing. Try a range of creamy ones, pungent vinegar-based dressings, and do some experimenting with combinations (honey mustard + creamy ranch was a surprising hit in one round). If everyone likes the same things, you can of course toss everything together in a big bowl, and be ready to serve. If picky eaters or different food preferences or even just different moods are a factor, try it buffet style, with each prepared ingredient laid out in separate bowl, and let everyone assemble their own and toss with a dressing of their choice.
One quick dressing suggestion whose creaminess and fresh herbs seemed especially suited to these salads: Blend together in an immersion blender or regular blender:
3-4 chopped garlic scapes
1-2 chopped scallions, including green parts
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
1/2 cup mayonnaise*
1/2 cup plain yogurt*
*you can change these ratios to suit your tastes/ health needs, shifting the balance to more yogurt and less mayo to lower the fat content. 1-2 tablespoons of rice vinegar or lemon juice salt and pepper to taste
Some of our recent combinations: Shell pasta with: broccoli, summer squash cubes, chopped garlic scapes and chopped kale blanched with the boiling pasta for the final minute of cooking, then mixed with scallions, salad turnips, crumbles blue cheese, and diced salami. Tossed with a simple creamy dressing of 1/4 cup mayonaise, 1 tablespoon rice vinegar, and 1 teaspoon of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper. Optional: serve on additional salad greens, with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, salt to taste. Penne, cooked with one or two (we lost track) whole bunches of rainbow chard tossed in at the end. Mixed when cool, with cooked garbanzo beans, olives, snow peas, sautéed garlic scapes and zucchini, cucumber, and several chopped heads of romaine lettuce. Served in butter-lettuce cups, for extra fun. Everyone chose their own dressing, but options included our creamy parsley/ garlic scape/ scallion dressing, a blue cheese, honey mustard, or a balsamic/blueberry vinaigrette. Full disclosure: most of us had several rounds, in order to try all the dressing options.