Cold Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomatoes, Roasted Peppers and Olives
Cold Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomatoes, Roasted Peppers and Olives
8
servings20
minutesCold Pasta dishes are wonderful for summer and all buffet displays. And the best part is, beside for boiling the pasta, this cold pasta dish doesn’t require any cooking. If you are watching your starch intake, or if you are simply looking for better grains, this is your chance to experiment with soba or rice noodles: Respectively low-gluten and gluten-free and prepared in a snap, they will do the job with flying colours!
For this cold pasta dish, you have a wide choice of pasta, but please don’t select a tubular pasta with holes running through their centres. The only time we want tubular pasta is when we have a not-too-rich pasta sauce, such as tomato or vegetable sauce.
Although this cold pasta dish is delicious as is, frozen artichokes hearts or bottoms would be a great addition, at no extra labor cost (just let them thaw!), and would be a good chance to sneak in the delicious, nutritious and low-calorie artichoke.
Ingredients
450g pasta (fusilli or other non-tubular pasta), boiled until just tender, 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid reserved (rice or soba noodles great too)
2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Optional: 400g bag frozen artichoke bottoms, thawed, diced
8 large cloves garlic, minced
1 large bunch basil, leaves only, sliced thin
2 cups sun-dried tomatoes, briefly soaked, squeezed dry and thinly sliced
3 roasted red peppers, bottled OK, sliced thin
Salt to taste (don’t add any salt until you taste the finished dish: You might not need any salt, as you have several salty ingredients in the dish: Sun-Dried tomatoes, capers, olives)
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1/4 cup tiny capers
1 cup oil-cured olives, or pitted nicoise olives, pitted and halved
Directions
- Toss all ingredients together and mix thoroughly.
- Serve at room temperature.
