TORELLINI SALAD

This is less of a typical tortellini salad, where the pasta is the main focus, and more of a big, awesome salad that has tortellinis too. In my family, this has always been a go-to summer meal; its refreshing, cool, healthy and you can eat a lot of it. It is also easy to make a big batch, keep it in the fridge, and have it on demand when you don't feel like cooking. If you live in or around New York City, get tortellinis at Piemonte in Little Italy. As far as I'm concerned, they have the best purchasable pasta in NYC. My favorites are the spinach pasta ones with spinach-cheese filling, but they have tons of amazing options. Anyway, back to the salad.

The thing that always made this salad distinctive to me was the fact that my mother lightly cooked some of the veggies first, softening them a little, so they blended with the rest of the ingredients. I used broccoli, carrots and fresh green beans, and steamed them until the colors got really bright. If you overcook the vegetables, they get much less fun. You still want to have a little crunch and character to set them apart from the other ingredients.

 

Steam That (not the tomatoes)

After that, everything is simple. Cook the tortellinis til they are chewy and delicious, mix everything together. I added some sliced cherry tomatoes and little shreds of fresh mozzarella I had lying around, but you can really do whatever. Another key in this salad is dressing: make your own. Good, simple salad dressing is really easy to make. Any combination of balsamic, wine (red or white) or even regular white vinegar, a little mustard (definitely not the yellow stuff), olive oil, and some minced garlic will wind up delicious if you get the proportions right. Start small and add ingredients slowly so you know what's going on and taste frequently. Salt and sugar according to how sweet or salty you want things. Herbs, honey, Tabasco, mayo, or whatever else you can think of all make good additions once you know what you're doing and want to direct the flavor more. For tortellini salad, I like to go basic. If you don't want your dressing to be too strong or too oily, you can cut it with a little water too (don't substitute water for oil, though, use a little of both). Shake and apply!

There it is.

Its hard to see all the awesome stuff in the pictures because its tossed, but every bite should have a bunch of yummy things in it.