Peppers, black olives, cheese and leftover diced ham all add flavor to this pasta salad, but pesto in the dressing was the finishing touch that everybody liked.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
… and it was a good way to use leftover ham
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Hmm. How lazy did I want to be?
I asked myself that question recently as I gathered ingredients for “Italian pasta salad.”
Oh, I had no problem trimming and dicing 2 cups of meat from the bone of our leftover Easter ham.
I had no problem gathering olives, tomatoes and peppers.
And while I didn’t have any “mozzarella pearls” — apparently they’re small mounds of fresh mozzarella — I easily found aged mozzarella, in the form of string cheese, which I sliced into pearl shapes.
The question of laziness concerned the dressing.
The author of the recipe wanted you to mix a quarter cup of pesto with vinegar, olive oil and a few other ingredients. And since my neighborhood store didn’t have any bunches of fresh basil on display, I was tempted to think vinegar and oil with some garlic would be flavor enough.
Then I remembered those tiny packs that contain just a few sprigs of an herb. Pushing my cart back to the produce section, I spotted one tiny pack of basil hanging from a hook. Surely that would be enough for a quarter cup of pesto.
It was, and before long I was glad I took the extra step.
“I wasn’t hungry all day until I started eating this,” said Mark, digging into the pasta salad. “The pesto makes it, and I love black olives.”
“I can tell it would have still tasted good with just vinegar and oil, but it’s really good with the pesto,” said our neighbor Roger.
“It’s very tasty, and it should taste even better the next day,” said my mom.
The original recipe, found at pioneerwoman.com, calls for diced salami but there was a suggestion that you could substitute diced ham. Among the extra changes I made: I (accidentally) forgot to add red onion; my rotini was whole grain; my tomatoes were grape rather than cherry; my peppers were fully grown rather than “baby” and I used a red one in addition to a green one; my mozzarella was aged, not fresh, and in the dressing I cut the olive oil down from 1 cup to 2/3 cup.
But, hey, I had pesto in the dressing, and I heard no complaints. Yum.
Here’s my adapted recipe:
Pasta Salad with Ham
For the dressing:
1/3 cup vinegar
2/3 cups olive oil
1/4 cup pesto (blend of basil, Parmesan, garlic, olive oil and pine nuts)
For the pasta salad:
1 pound rotini pasta, cooked and cooled
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
2 cups diced ham
8 ounces mozzarella, cut into small disks
1 cup sliced black olives
2 diced bell peppers, one red and one green
***
For the dressing, whisk together the vinegar and pesto. Gradually add the olive oil, whisking constantly until combined. Set aside. For the pasta salad, put cooked pasta in large bowl. Add the tomatoes, ham, mozzarella, olives, and bell peppers. Whisk the dressing once more, then pour it over the salad, stirring to combine.