post-dinner post

We had about every last inlaw I own for dinner tonight. These events are Perfectly Pleasant (for which I am duly grateful) but they are a good day’s drive from deeply engaging or raucously amusing. So I concentrate instead on the food, on making something that I’ll enjoy while working within the confines of what others will. The cousins were having a blast playing together, and I made some entertainment for myself by creating a new pasta salad recipe to accompany the safe grilled chicken and fresh green beans (I do grow my own but have been fairly accused of some stinginess about sharing them with Just Anyone; the ones we passed around the table tonight came from friendly and fascinating Tim Belcher, down on our Farmer’s Market).

My mother-in-law makes some mean yeasted dinner rolls. I don’t have the recipe because a) they are her standby contribution and b) I’m too lazy to make anything with yeast, but I’ll try to finagle the recipe from her sometime so you can try it, because they are worth the effort. As long as it’s your effort and not mine. For now, here’s this instead:

Greekish Pasta Salad

(all amounts are approximations, since I tend to cook by eye and not by measured line)

Cook in water as salty as the sea:
12 oz amusingly shaped pasta

steam for 3 min:
1 zucchini in bite-sized pieces (one is plenty, no matter the superfluity of your garden or your neighbor’s)

Chop:
1-2 lg tomatoes (or a double handful of cherry ones halved)
1 sweet pepper (any color will do)
fresh basil
handful kalamata olives
tender green onions if you have them

shake up well in an old peanut butter jar or somesuch:
1/4c seasoned rice vinegar
2T Dijon mustard
clove garlic, minced/chopped/mushed
2 grinds black pepper
glug olive oil

Drain and rinse pasta; add veggies and dressing; toss gently together. Sprinkle most generously with feta cheese (or serve on the side for palates unaccustomed/unwilling, of which I had both at my table tonight). Even MIL asked for the recipe.