Eminoodle’s Pasta Salad

I normally won’t write about my coworkers here (unless I happen to mention one of my best friends who works with me AND lives next door, but she’s a special circumstance), but I want to give a little background on this pasta dish.  One of my coworkers is thinking of changing some lifestyle habits, and I had the pleasure of having lunch with her yesterday and talking about it.  Today we had a surprise pot luck at work for her, because she is going away for a little while.  I’m fairly new to the team where we work together, but I love this lady.  She is so sweet, and accepting, and she’s smart and funny and just a great person.  She’s a little younger than my mom would have been (my mom passed away 8 1/2 years ago), but I think they would have been great friends if they had met.  i don’t know if you’ve ever met someone who you just know adds something to your life, but this coworker of mine does this for me.  She is a very special lady.

So, she is new to eating more vegetables, and I wanted to show her how good they can be if done right.  I had another coworker (who ate with us) ask for the recipe, and being as this has been becoming one of my signature dishes at work, I’d like to share it (next time I’ll make something else for the pot luck!).  She also gave me this nickname, and since I’m struggling to come up with a name for this dish, I thought this was fitting.

My apologies for lack of pictures on this one.  However, a lot of the steps that we’ll go through we did on previous recipes, so I’ll link back to those for visual aids.

Eminoodle’s Pasta Salad

Prep time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 box rotini.  Barilla makes this excellent line of pastas now that have veggies in the mix.  For this one I really like the green rotini.  It’s made from spinach and zucchini puree, so it adds even more veggie goodness.
• 1/2 small red onion (1/4 if a large onion)
• 3 roma tomatoes (2 if you use on-the-vine)
• 1 can quartered artichoke hearts
• 1 cup green salad olives
• 1 package sweet basil
• 1 block of mozzarella
• 1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
• 4 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 Tbsp salt
• 1 tsp garlic powder

Tools

• Cutting board
• Knife
• Stock pot
• Colander
• Large bowl for serving
• Cooking spoon

What To Do

1. Fill stock pot with water and heat at medium high to boil.
2. Clean tomatoes and basil.  You can use the 3 parts water, 1 part vinegar mix to clean the tomatoes and basil.  Rinse well and dry the tomatoes and blot the basil to dry.  Set aside.
3. Your water is probably boiling by now, if so, add your pasta.  If not, revisit this step when the water is boiling.
4. Dice onion, but cutting into small slices and then doing a radial cut (like we did in this recipe.)  Place in large bowl.
5. Don’t forget to stir the pasta.
6. Cut tomatoes in half, remove vine belly button, and remove the seeds from the tomatoes (like we did in steps 6 and 7 of this recipe.)
7. Dice the tomatoes and place in the large bowl.
8. Stir the pasta.
9. Open the can of artichoke hearts, and drain the water.  Cut into thirds (leaves, and then half the base).  Discard any leaves that seem too tough.  Put cut up artichoke hearts in the bowl.
10. Stir the pasta.
11. Add olives to the mix in the large bowl.
12. Also referring to the capellini pomodoro recipe, remove the basil from the stems, and do that fancy chiffonade cut (steps 9 and 10).  Add to the bowl.
13. The pasta is most likely done now.  Test to make sure it’s cooked thoroughly, and drain in colander.
14. Cut mozzarella chunk into 1/4″ cubes.  I recommend cutting into approximately 1/4″ slices, then cutting the slices in stacks of 3 – cut in half lengthwise, and then in quarters.  Add to bowl.
15. Test the pasta to see if it has cooled down.  If not, you can rinse it with cold water until it is cool.  Once the pasta is cooled, place in the bowl.
16. Drizzle on olive oil, balsamic vinegar and red wine vinegars.
17. Sprinkle on salt, and garlic power.
18. Mix thoroughly until oil/vinegars are spread throughout the dish and everything is coated.

Serve immediately or refrigerate overnight and serve the next day.  This is a versatile dish that can be used as a main course (Carl and I will eat this sometimes for a meal), or share as a side dish.

Sadly I have no pictures of this one, but I’ve made other varieties, using cherry tomatoes instead of diced tomatoes (I prefer the diced/deseeded tomatoes, because I will eat those – I don’t eat cherry tomatoes because of the goopy inside, as you know if you read the full entry for cappelini pomodoro), kalamata olives (with no pits) in place of artichoke hearts, and tri-color rotini.  Here’s a picture of that one.

The recipe in this blog entry is my preferred way to make this dish, but pasta salad is great because you can add whatever veggies you want for different flavor combinations.

Farfalle with Arrabbiata and “Buffalo” Mozzarella

I have high expectations for myself tonight.  My goal is to get this recipe posted up as well as one for the pasta salad I brought into work today for a potluck (had someone ask for the recipe, and it’s not the first time – that usually gets good reviews).  We’ll start with the one and see how it goes.

I’ve actually started writing this blog twice.  The first time I started writing it was the night I was making the dish and had a bit of a catastrophe in the kitchen (more about that in a minute) and then the other morning I was going to write it up, but I ran out of time after I had started my intro and then accidentally hit the backspace button while not in the text field.  Lesson learned on that one.

So, third time’s a charm, right?  Let’s hope so.

Before I get started on this recipe, let me apologize.  I had started with the camera in tow, and got some decent pictures to start, but then, when I was blending the tomatoes I had an incident which made it look like someone went on a murderous rampage in my kitchen.  Blended tomatoes sprayed EVERYWHERE.  I was covered in them, the kitchen, the cutting board, parts of the floor…  It was disastrous.  Thankfully Carl came to my rescue and was able to salvage the tomatoes off the cutting board while I had a minor breakdown (no tears, but some pouting and generally being pissy about not being able to take the pictures).  I almost called off the blog, but Carl convinced me not to, and I decided to do it for whoever might want to try this recipe, because let me tell you… This dish is DELICIOUS.  It is not for the faint of taste bud, or someone who thinks ketchup is spicy.  An Arrabbiata sauce is a spicy red sauce.  Arrabbiato is actually Italian for angry.  So it’s only fitting I had my kitchen look like that scene from Kill Bill when Uma Thurman faces off against the Crazy Eighty-Eights.  If it had been done in color.  And without further ado:

Farfalle with Arrabbiata and “Buffalo” Mozzarella

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook time: 15 minutes (ish)

Ingredients

• 7-8 cloves of garlic (have you started to notice a theme yet?)
• 1/4 onion
• 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 Tbsp crushed red pepper (you can get this in the spice aisle – the same stuff that you put on pizza at a restaurant.  We’ve found the Badia brand in the Ethnic section of our grocery store is good quality for the price).
• 1/2 tsp rosemary
• 1 tsp oregano
• 2 cans of Hunt’s Spicy Red Pepper Tomatoes
• 1 tsp red wine vinegar
• 1 Tbsp salt
• 1 box farfalle pasta (aka bow-ties, because bow-ties are cool.)
• 1 – 16 oz package of Buffalo Mozzarella (we use the Belgiosio brand – it’s a big log of cheese cut into slices).  You could also use Mozzarella “Pearls” for this dish, but we find that cutting the cheese ourselves makes us laugh when we say that, and it is cheaper in the long run.  Also, random fact:  Buffalo Mozzarella from Italy comes from Water Buffalo milk.  We haven’t gotten that down in America, so ours comes from cows.  I’d love to try the real stuff some day, as I’ve heard it’s exquisite (I mean, it comes from water buffalo teets!  It’s gotta be good for people to keep milking them, right?), but this is what we get here in the States.

Tools

• Cutting board
• Knife
• Can opener (don’t waste your money on an electric one unless you have arthritis, especially if you live in a place that has hurricanes, because you’re boned when you have no power.)
• Stick Blender
• large saucepan
• mortar and pestle
• stockpot
• colander
• spoon for cooking

What To Do

1. Fill stockpot with water and put on medium high heat.
2. Open cans of tomatoes and blend with the stick blender.  Ok, this is where I messed up.  Hold the can with one hand, and sink the blender into the tomatoes (cover the bell shape) THEN turn it on.  Run it all the way down once.  This one motion will blend the tomatoes well enough.  If you like your sauces very smooth, do this twice.  Make sure the bell is completely immersed in the tomatoes before you turn it on.  Unless you want to clean up a big mess.  Carl is not available.
3. Grind the rosemary and oregano together in the mortar and pestle, applying pressure and working around in a circular motion.  I recommend you turn the pestle (wand part) in half circle motions while doing this (it makes it go faster).  Set to the side.
4. Peel and mince garlic (like we did in steps 3 and 4 of this recipe).
5. Put garlic in saucepan (no heat yet).
6. Slice onion in thin slices, like so:
7. Dice the onion by doing a small radial cut.  (Similar to what we did in step 7 of this recipe, but smaller: ).
8. Put onion in saucepan (still no heat).
9. Add crushed red pepper to saucepan.
10. Cover with olive oil, and apply medium low heat to saute.
11. Saute (stirring the whole time) for about 3 minutes, then add the ground herbs from step 3.
12. Saute for about 1 more minute, then add tomatoes, red wine vinegar and salt.
13. Stir and reduce to low.
14. By now, your water should be boiling.  Go ahead and add the farfalle to the boiling water.
15. While the pasta is cooking, and the sauce is simmering, cut the cheese (hee-hee.  I’ve got the sense of humor of a 4 year old.)  Do this, but parting the log (pre-sliced) down the middle.  Cut in quarters one way, and then turn and do a cross cut in quarters.  This will leave you with pieces on the larger side of bite sized chunks.  Stir the pasta and sauce before you cut the other half of the log.
16. When pasta has cooked to your preference (warning, the box will say it’s done sooner than it is – the folds in the bow-tie make it take longer – so be sure you test it before you drain it), drain the pasta in the colander.
17. Put pasta into dishes, add cheese to the top, and cover with sauce (the cheese will get melty and delicious at this point), and serve.

Enjoy!  Let me know if you try this recipe and like it.  I’m going to try to get that pasta salad recipe up next, and I’ve had a request to post a basic marinara so I’ll do that soon, too.  I’d also like to get some additional foods on here (salads, sides and deserts).  Ah, if only there were enough hours in the day.