The Pasta Salad That Won’t Get Weird at the Picnic
You might be familiar with the congealed mayo crime scene, a summer tragedy. What started as a wonderful idea—old school pasta salad with green olives and an entire jar of Hellmann’s!—turns into slimy sludge as the sun beats down on your super cute picnic. That’s why we set out to develop a summer pasta salad that can stand up to the heat, and maybe even bring a little itself. Something that travels well, tastes like summer, and matches a variety of plaid blankets. Molly Baz’s jammy pepper pasta salad is what we got, and we’re extremely happy about it.
It stars sweet bell peppers (we’ll leave the colors up to you; no comment on green) that get the caramelized onion treatment with spicy chiles (if you want), garlic, thyme, salt, a little sugar to help everything brown, and vinegar in a Dutch oven over medium-low. It’s mostly hands-off at this point, a stir here and there, until the peppers get silky (give it around an hour). That’s essentially your sauce, and it’s reminiscent of your favorite Italian salad dressing with that sweet-spicy-tangy vibe. I also call it lip-smacky, for which the thesaurus had no other alternatives.
The rest of the salad can come together in the meantime: quickly pickle some red onion for a hit of acid, boil some rigatoni (the preferred pasta to catch the sauces in its outer ridges and inner tube), toast some hazelnuts, dig around the closets for that picnic blanket with the tarp-thingy on one side. Once the peppers are ready, combine everything and top with a cheese that won’t melt or, shudder, sweat in the sun, like creamy-salty ricotta salata. A few tears of fresh basil and you’re ready to go.
The jammy pepper mixture, we also realized, would be incredible as a bruschetta/toast topping, or served on a platter with ricotta, or squished into a veggie sandwich. It’s as versatile as that tie-dye shirt you’re wearing everywhere this summer. Yeah, we’ve seen it. You look great. You’re really pulling it off. It’s amazing how appropriate it is for every occasion, just like...this...recipe...
Ge the recipe:
Jammy Pepper Pasta Salad
Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit
