Greek Pasta Salad Recipe
As pasta salads go, things can boring pretty fast. Of course, as we have talked about before, all we need is a little inspiration to help make sure we can give our dishes some new and fresh twists. Our pasta with tuna is a good example of using the simplest of inspiration to create a delicious dish. In this case, thoughts of some “Mediterranean flair” helped us choose the ingredients that reflect tastes of that region to put with the tuna and pasta. For our pasta salad, how about some “Greek flair” to see what we can come up with?
Putting together a Greek pasta salad recipe is as easy as thinking about all the tasty Greek products we love and putting them together with noodles and a dressing that takes us to Athens in every bite. The most obvious inspiration is the classic Greek salad – Onion, Tomato and Cucumber. Of course, a flavor walk through Greece would be incomplete without the briny taste of feta cheese. Feta cheese is one of the best sheep’s milk cheeses ever and it too is a Greek salad staple. It may be foodie cliche and expected, but a Greek pasta salad recipe without feta would be, well, unGreek!
Olives are also on the list, but we should challenge ourselves to bring some variety here. There is more to greek olives then just Kalamata! Try and find some Amfissa, Chalkidiki, Nafplion, and Thassos olives. All of them have something special to bring to the flavor and texture party.
A Greek pasta salad recipe will only be as good as its ingredients. This is certainly true of the dressing. A classic dressing of red wine vinegar and olive oil would adorn a good Greek salad, but for a great Greek pasta salad recipe, something fresher is in order. Using lemon as the acid in the dressing works perfectly. With the addition of some good olive oil (Greek if you can get it) you have a good foundation for a tasty vinaigrette. To bring it all together a little mustard is great and this will be taken to the next level with the addition of oregano. Oregano is big in Greek cooking and does well in pasta salads.
Of course, there is more you can add – roasted artichokes, capers, etc. The list goes on and on. Simply thinking about the foods of Greece offers a lot of simple inspiration to create a great pasta salad.
Here is my Greek pasta salad recipe…
- 1 lb of curly pasta noodles like cavatappi or your favorite shape.
- 1 medium sweet onion
- 10-12 cherry tomatoes
- 1/2 medium cucumber
- 1 cup of mixed greek olives
- 1/2 lb of feta cheese
- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
- 2 tsp of grainy mustard
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1/2 cup of olive oil
- 1 tsp of dried oregano
- salt and pepper
- Cook the pasta al dente, according to the manufacturer's directions. Drain the pasta and rinse it under cold water. Set aside. Allow the noodles to cool and drain fully.
- Dice the onion in to a small dice. Do the same to the cucumber and onion.
- Quarter the cherry tomatoes. Cut the feta into small cubes.
- In a large bowl, toss the pasta with the onion, cucumber, tomato, feta, and olives together.
- Chop the garlic finely.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, garlic, mustard and oregano.
- While whisking, slowly drizzle the olive oil into the lemon juice mixture. Season with salt and pepper.
- Drizzle the dressing over the pasta/vegetable mixture adding enough to coat the ingredients, but not enough to drown the salad. Toss well.
- Check and adjust seasoning.
- Serve at room temperature or cold.
- Other additions to the salad may include fresh baby spinach, slices of marinated artichoke hearts and avocado.
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