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Martha Stewart shares five of her favorite pasta salad recipes along with her best tips and techniques for getting them just right. Learn why she rinses pasta in cold water for pasta salad, the easy trick for perfectly cooked asparagus, and how she quickly roasts peppers over an open flame, all while making fresh, flavorful dishes for everything from weeknight dinners to summer gatherings.
Transcript
00:00so i thought i'd show you how to make a very simple yet tasty spring pasta salad
00:04now into the bowl we are going to put beautiful cherry tomatoes three quarters of a pound i have
00:12some asparagus blanching and water just cook them until they're just tender and they're still bright
00:17green and now i'm they're in an ice bath so that they stop the cooking have to dry them off
00:23so
00:24these can be cut on a diagonal like this so this will all go right into the bowl with the
00:30tomatoes
00:31and the pasta is cooking it takes about um oh somewhere around seven to eight minutes so we can
00:38drain it you have to make it cold so now we have this and we can let this just drain
00:46a little bit
00:47into the bowl some lemon zest and the juice of two lemons and we have olive oil and your feta
00:56cheese
00:57and your beautiful watercress just the leaves and pasta that goes right in and you have a colorful
01:05healthy pasta salad this delicious whole wheat penne pasta with kalamata olives and lemon so drain your
01:14pasta shake out all the hot water and let the pasta cool so these olives should just be chopped up
01:20now
01:20in a big flat skillet heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil and we're going to put two cloves of
01:28garlic crush that garlic bruise it a little bit and add that to your oil and we're going to have
01:34according to your taste four anchovy fillets and they should just be coarsely chopped and a lot of
01:42capers and we will use like a large maybe a third of a cup or so now reduce the heat
01:49don't burn
01:49anything and just add the capers now add your olives you're only going to cook this for a couple
01:56minutes don't overcook the olives don't need to be cooked a lot maybe for two minutes or so put some
02:03peel right into the olives the zest of one lemon and we're also going to add the juice of the
02:09lemon and
02:10now we're just going to mix it with the pasta you can just put the pasta right into the pan
02:14so just
02:14toss your pasta like this add your cheese add your flat leaf parsley pour this all into a big serving
02:21bowl or onto a platter and here you have it jane the macaroni is done oh goody usually i don't
02:27rinse
02:27my pasta in cold water but because it's been cooked in salted water and because i want it cold to
02:34make
02:35into macaroni salad i ran a little bit of cold water over it um i like cucumbers in it because
02:40it
02:40adds a little crunch and a little odd flavor but what i like to do is take the seeds out
02:46of the cucumber
02:47you're going to be kidding no no it's easy you can take a knife like this and just cut the
02:52cucumber in
02:52quarters lengthwise and just gently cut out the seeds i am roasting the peppers right on the open flame
03:00she reported that to steve who's out of the barbecue and we have one yellow pepper that's been
03:07cored actually this is an orange pepper and all the seeds removed and you cut it like again no no
03:13this is fine okay this is fine yep i don't want it too much smaller than that yeah so one
03:17long pickling
03:18cucumber a japanese cucumber like this is plenty we have some lovely chives already cut up and the peppers
03:26once the skin is entirely blackened like that i wrap it up in a piece of paper towel like see
03:33i see
03:33and this sweats the skin the black skin off the red flesh so once this has a chance to just
03:41steam a little bit jane look i use the paper towel to pull off that skin and look how beautiful
03:47it is
03:48a lot of people put this underwater and they rinse off all the pepper taste for the dressing for the
03:54macaroni i always like to squeeze a fresh lemon right into the cooked macaroni on top of the
03:59vegetables of course don't forget salt and pepper oh this is so good this macaroni i'm just draining
04:05the pasta we're using a pound of very nice medium-sized shell pasta and we want to make sure that
04:13we cool
04:13it off completely because we're going to make a cold pasta salad with this in the skillet we're going to
04:21sauté some beautiful fresh small leeks that we found at the farmer's market pretty fresh corn i'm
04:29going to slice it right into the dish see if i can keep it there it's so easy to take
04:33corn off the cob
04:34like this it'll pick up all the flavors of the rest of the ingredients and be very nice now the
04:40pasta
04:41looks good doesn't it see this has a little bit of steam left in it just that touch of oil
04:46just to make
04:47it glisten add your corn now this is two and a half cups of corn kernels about four to five
04:52ears of corn
04:52depending on the size of the ears you're just going to really cook this until the corn is cooked
05:01add a little bit of freshly ground black pepper and if you like a large pinch of crushed red pepper
05:07flakes
05:07and i'm using an egg-shaped cherry tomato the tomatoes can go right in about a pint of cherry tomatoes
05:16a half a cup of basil leaves that you can just tear you can use opal basil or purple basil
05:22squeeze lemon
05:22juice just a quarter of a cup wish you could smell this it's really it's really nice so there isn't
05:30that
05:30pretty that gets added right to the pasta now remember if you're not on a diet you can add
05:39some of your favorite cheese a ricotta salata this is a sheep's milk cheese and just all over the top
05:47adds just a little authentic italian touch and just serve this right away if you want to start with that
05:54okay um and i'm just cutting some cauliflower into um sort of small florets because you'd want it to
06:00sort of match the shape of your shell and then that's just going to go all onto this and you
06:06don't
06:07mind a little crust on these croutons no i like to use the crust because i think you should use
06:10every
06:10bit i mean you could make those the day before as well if you wanted to it's great with day
06:14or bread
06:14i think it's a good usage for that so they're just going to go in there and then onto that
06:18tray
06:19we're going to put one can of drained rinsed and drained chickpeas okay in a single layer
06:27so you could use dry if you have them you could soak them you could soak them and do that
06:31as well
06:31um if you want to make a pasta in a few minutes pasta in a pinch this is what you
06:35do and then i'm
06:37going to add probably two tablespoons just to drizzle i eyeball it but it's about two tablespoons of olive
06:44oil and season with salt and pepper and i love this dish as well just as a side actually it's
06:50really delicious just i don't have i was eating it in the kitchen i hope you were i hope we're
06:54not
06:54short no a little olive oil on the on the no they just go in dry yeah and they only
06:59need 10
06:59this goes in for 25 minutes and they just go in for 10 so they can go in at any
07:04time i think
07:04there's one in there already done so uh so 10 minutes till crisp yeah just until it's like you
07:11know i think we have one don't we have one in here i think we've got some cauliflower and chickpeas
07:15in there so we've drained the pasta um the trick to good pasta as you know is to salt it
07:22um in the
07:23water when you're um before you cook it oh the chickpeas get uh like crunchy yeah they're really
07:28crunchy it's delicious so like give you a little bit of um chew so we're going to put that straight
07:32in
07:32here if you want to put that in martha so right with the shell right with the shells once that
07:37pasta's
07:38been drained let's go straight in yeah which is so nice and they smell so good and then that gets
07:48a stir and we put in two tablespoons i think you've already oiled this pasta but we put yeah i
07:53just put
07:54like one two tablespoons in plus the parsley about three tablespoons of chopped parsley and let's give
08:01that a good stir and then about the ricotta the ricotta well we can actually as we put that on
08:06top
08:07actually we serve it we can serve it now and put that on top with the croutons oh okay so
08:11let's put
08:11it on this um plate all right so you can serve it family style or just individually it doesn't matter
08:23but i like it family style and you could serve it out of the pot yeah if you're plating but
08:28but it's so
08:29pretty when you put it on the platter so pretty boy how beautiful see look it's so generous that we
08:35sit that is that's a lot so this serves like what four people four to six yeah okay and then
08:41the croutons
08:41we're just going to put those on top and if you just want to sprinkle those and then just like
08:46a
08:46dollop of that on top and i would suggest serving the a bit more ricotta to the table so people
08:51can help
08:51help themselves and that's the dish
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