This is the ONLY pasta salad that has EVER evoked any sort of emotion from me. As a matter of fact, not only did it evoke emotion, it evoked whole, pure, legendary love. This is big.
Normally, I feel blasé about pasta salad for the following reasons:
1) 97% of all things are better hot than they are cold. This is a legitimate statistic.
2) Most pasta salads just seem to be blatantly obvious hodgepodges of whatever leftovers there are in the fridge. This, to me, is a display of a horrifying lack of care.
3) Simply because I haven’t tasted a SINGLE flavorful pasta salad (ever), I just never thought it possible.
This, though. Sweet lamb of God.
Here is a list of the things this dish has going for it:
1) Bowtie pasta = LOVE.
2) Fresh pesto, with some minced jalapeños mixed in for just a hint of spiciness (read: not overbearing, HOLY-CRAP-MY-MOUTH-IS-ON-FIRE spiciness; rather, only enough so you feel the heat after you’ve swallowed your bite). The pesto itself is yummy and verdant and basilly and just tastes like a walk through a garden. Spring, spring, spring.
3) Do you see those shrimp? Do I even need to explain? They are gigantic and meaty and taste like lobster. The end.
4) Grape tomatoes are always agreeable, and I say this as someone who was recently converted to tomatoes. They’re compact enough that a) you can eat them in a single bite and b) there’s a rounded-out flavor and texture that is sometimes lacking in regular tomatoes. (I for one can attest to the disheartening grittiness/blandness of those just-so tomatoes that run rampant.)
5) Just barely cooked green beans, sliced into bite-sized pieces. These are an afterthought, it seems, and I didn’t feel strongly about their presence, but in hindsight I realize that they really just lent such a freshness to the dish (as green things are apt to do). So while they didn’t have that much zing flavor-wise, it was nice to have their mild sweet crunch as a complement to the otherwise very strong, punchy bits.
That’s really the entire ingredients list. Goes to show you that a tight, concise blend of high-quality things can do the trick MUCH better than a novella of just whatever you could find. Try this at home!
