timothy's Journal: Glad tidings! No. 5: Fantastic pasta salad

Yesterday, shared dinner w/ a few people here at the house. I made a pasta salad, with which I was and am well-pleased.

The salad proper (that is, not counting the dressing):
- 1.5 lbs dry weight penne rigate, cooked all dente, rinsed in cold water, allowed to sit for a few minutes
- 1 cucumber, seeds scraped out, rough peeled, cut long on the bias (pulp reserved)
- 2 carrots, cut in long thin sticks (messy, but mission accomplished. No neat matchsticks here)
- A dozen or so kalamata olives, ripped in quarters
- 3 artichoke hearts, since they were around
- 1 small tomato cut into strips (pulp reserved for dressing)
- fennel -- perhaps an ounce or two, in total -- some thin slices from the bulb, and some of the wispy leaves
- 2 stalks celery, cut slightly on the bias; the ugly fat ends reserved for dressing
- red onion, in thin slices -- perhaps an ounce in total
- a bit of green pepper, in small strips
- sesame seeds. These were untoasted, toasted would have been even better

Dressing:
- olive oil
- basalmic vinegar
- apple cider vinegar
- some red wine
- some red wine vinegar
- rice vinegar
- tomato (pulp and seeds from the tomato sliced for the salad)
- fine diced fennel and some fennel leaves
- fine diced celery
- fine diced red onion
- fine diced green pepper
- one thin-sliced button mushroom
- fine diced carrots
- fine diced cucumber pulp / seeds
- salt, bit of pepper.
- 3 drops Tobasco
- a short squeeze of lime

This is my usual salad dressing strategy: oil, a bit more vinegar than oil, Tobasco, salt, pepper, and lots of chopped bits from the salad ingredients. I put in less pepper than usual (more would have been fine), and very little hot stuff. Often I'll put in some other ingredients, all of which were left out this time: curry, soy sauce, dill, garlic, red pepper flakes, cilantro ...

Altogether, slightly over half a cup of dressing, stirred into the cooled noodles, which had been poured (when cooled) over the vegetables.

Chilled for an hour or so in the fridge in a giant steel bowl.

Served; salt was needed, and some further sprinklings of basalmic vinegar. Also stirred in some salad greens at-table. Probably should have included olive bits in the dressing itself.

The fennel adds a great taste; Jon Lasser's apple/fennel salad may be the first time I knowingly tasted fennel, and it's great.