Garden Pasta Salad with Fresh Herb Dressing

I love a good salad. In fact salads are the backbone of my summer (and often autumn, winter and spring) menus.  They can be made ahead and at times even improve with advance preparation, leaving me free near dinner time to focus on other parts of the meal or on other things entirely – like having a conversation with a friend, sharing a glass of wine with my husband, or even finishing a chapter of that book I started.  

Salad Days

This salad is one I discovered long ago, as a young newlywed.  I found it in Better Homes and Gardens Meals for One or Two, a cookbook I received as a wedding gift. Garden Pasta Salad with Fresh Herb Dressing was one of the first recipes I flagged in the book. The directions were simple and using wine in a recipe was new to me at the time.  By today’s standards I was not even old enough to purchase the wine used in the Fresh Herb Dressing the first time I made this salad, but that was long ago and I lived in Texas at the time.  Enough said.

This recipe remained a favorite for years.  It was a part of our standard picnic menu, shared on the lawn as we gathered with friends to enjoy summer concerts and seasons of free Shakespeare in the Park. As my family grew, so did the recipe.  Originally written to serve two, the version I make now serves 8 or more.  One summer I even expanded it to serve fifty hungry football players at a Unity Camp practice lunch. 

Keeping It Fresh

I am still regularly surprised by how much I like this recipe.  It is easy to put together. It makes good use of fresh seasonal produce and helps me clean out the fridge. Choose a few pretty vegetables from your backyard garden or a local produce stand. Pluck a fragrant sprig of fresh basil and another of parsley.  Check the deli drawer for any leftover pepperoni from pizza night.  The dressing uses a little lemon juice, and a few tablespoons of wine.  Maybe you have a little wine leftover or can open a bottle set aside for dinner tonight.  If not, just substitute a mild white wine vinegar. A bit of salty crumbled feta rounds out the flavors. 

When I make Garden Pasta Salad with Fresh Herb Dressing I store the dressed vegetable mixture separately from the pasta until just before serving.  Then I top the cooked pasta with the dressed mixture and add the feta just before serving. 

Garden Pasta Salad

Course: Salads, SidesCuisine: ItalianDifficulty: Easy

Servings

8

servings

Prep time

15

minutes

Cooking time

10

minutes

Total time

30

minutes

Garden Pasta Salad with Fresh Herb Dressing highlights fragrant herbs and seasonal produce in a beautiful salad that you can make ahead.

Ingredients

• Fresh Herb Dressing

• ¼ cup olive oil

• 3 Tablespoons dry white wine

• 2 Tablespoons lemon juice

• 1 teaspoon sugar

• 2 teaspoons snipped fresh basil

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

• several dashes bottled hot pepper sauce

• Garden Pasta Salad

• ½ – 1 cup pepperoni or salami (or similar sausage) cut into small pieces

• 1 cup tomato, diced, or cherry tomato halves

• 1 cup chopped cucumber

• 1 cup chopped green pepper

• ¼ cup red onion, or three green onions, finely chopped

• ¼ cup chopped parsley

• ¼ cup chopped black olives, if desired

• 8 ounces pasta ( I usually use fusilli, rotini or farfalle)

• ½ cup crumbled feta cheese (2 ounce)

Directions

• In Advance:
• Prepare Fresh Herb Dressing – In a jar with a tight fitting lid, combine olive oil, white wine, lemon juice, sugar, snipped basil, salt, pepper and hot pepper sauce. Cover and shake well. Set aside.
• Prepare Salad mixture – In a medium bowl, combine sausage, tomato, cucumber, green pepper, onion, parsley and olives (if desired).
• Toss Salad mixture with Fresh Herb Dressing. Cover and chill thoroughly.
• Day Of:
• Cook pasta according to package directions until just tender. Drain; rinse with cold water then drain again. Continue rinsing and draining till pasta is no longer hot.
• Turn cooked pasta into a salad bowl. Spoon chilled Salad mixture over pasta. Toss to combine. Sprinkle with crumbled feta cheese.
• Refrigerate until ready to serve.
• Enjoy!