Pasta Salad Recipe - Veggie Style ♥
Vote for Pasta Salad Veggie Style!
Your nugget of nutritional Info for this post:
Celery takes center stage for this dish. Not just bunny or diet food, or even the base for peanut butter, there's healthy punch in that crunch!
Celery packs a punch, all right, but not in the gut—calorie-wise, or otherwise, since it protects the digestive tract from inflammation. It's the only veggie to contain: apiuman, aka non-starch polysaccharides found in the crunchy stalk's pectin (the stuff that's good for your nails)
Full of antioxidants such as: flavonoids & vitamin C, it brings dihydrostilbenoids like lunularin to the table, along with furanocoumarins like bergapten and psoralen. These good for the heart ♥ phenolic nutrients are similar to those found in wine, and protect us from free radicals.
The Results!
The Ingredients:
Recipe in Rebus:
Cook Time
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 30 min
Ready in: 40 min
Yields: 2 quarts
Ingredients
- 12 oz tri-color pasta, spirals
- 8 oz smoked cheese, of choice
- ¼ cup Parmesan
- 4 stalks celery
- 3 red bell peppers
- 4 oz pitted, kalamata olives, drained
- 4 oz artichoke hearts ♥, drained
- ½ bulb garlic
- ¼ cup tarragon
- ¼ cup Italian parsley
- ¼ cup basil
- ¼ cup olive oil
- THESE NEXT, 2 INGREDIENTS ARE EITHER / OR
- 1 cup Italian Salad Dressing, OR
- ½ cup olive oil + ¼ cup red wine vinegar ( your basic 2:1 ratio), blended very well
How to Do It:
- Add pasta to rapidly boiling water with a little oil & salt. Cook to AL DENTE, and no longer. This is particularly important to this salad, as pasta absorbs the liquids in the salad, and gets very bloated if over-cooked.
- Drain. Place in large, mixing bowl and mix with about ¼ cup olive oil to prevent sticking, and set aside.
- Grab your bell peppers, slice and seed, and place on foil.
- Broil until skins are black.
- Peel back skin with paring knife.
- Chop into bite-size pieces, and set aside.
- Grab parsley bunch firmly by the stems, and rake a fork through the leaves.
- Mince & (you guessed it) set aside.
- Mince tarragon. Set aside.
- Chop basil a bit more coarsely. Set aside.
- Chop celery in the predictable fashion. Set aside.
- Remove rind from smoked cheese, cube and set aside.
- Peel garlic & mince. Set aside. (I find tapping the clove gently with a meat mallet helps crack the peel, and facilitates peeling :)
- Drain olives. Chop kalamata olives into rings, and set aside.
- Drain artichoke hearts. Chop hearts coarsely, and set aside but only briefly. We're ready to assemble this bad boy!
- Add brolied peppers first. MIX AFTER EACH ADDITION!
- Add celery.
- Add smoked cheese.
- Add kalamata olives.
- Add artichoke hearts ♥.
- Add parsley, basil & tarragon.
- Add Parmesan.
- Add garlic.
- Add dressing of choice (Italian or home-made oil & vinegar) Add salt and pepper to taste (or don't) and, boom! Good to go.
plate & serve!
