5-Ingredient Pesto Pasta Salad

Year eight. Done. Wait — let me recalculate. Week 416 is the end of Year 8 (weeks 365-416). Four hundred and sixteen weeks. Eight years from the dark kitchen. Eight years of cornbread and children and businesses and the steady, stubborn insistence on growing toward the light. The sunflower on my wrist is three years old now. The restaurant is two years old. The expansion is one month old. The dinner service is two weeks old. Everything is new and everything is old and the new and the old are the same thing because the cornbread is the same and the woman making it is different every year and the difference is the story and the story is: Sarah Mitchell from Antioch, Tennessee, opened a restaurant and the restaurant grew and the growing was the whole point.

Spring vegetable pasta. Year eight. The ninth pasta. Made at the expanded restaurant. On the new stove. With the bigger space and the twelve stools and the four tables and the reading corner and the smoker and the dinner lighting and everything that Year 8 built. Chloe made the pasta (tradition — she's been making it since Year 5). She made it and I sat at the counter and she served me and the serving is the tradition and the tradition is the line and the line is Chloe and Chloe is the future and the future is: a thirteen-year-old girl in a chef's jacket making spring vegetable pasta in a restaurant that has her recipes on the menu and her money in the walls and her photographs on the Instagram and her name next to her mother's name on the door. The future is: her. The future has always been: her.

Year eight. Done. Elijah turns five next week. Jayden is ten. Chloe is thirteen. Sarah is thirty-three. Mama is: Mama (ageless, tireless, still critiquing and still crying and still the foundation that everything stands on). The table has: twelve seats and four tables and a reading corner and a smoker and a woman behind the counter who started with Hamburger Helper and ended — no. Not ended. Who is IN THE MIDDLE of a story that started with Hamburger Helper and currently includes a $296,000 restaurant and will include whatever comes next because the coming-next is the Mitchell way. The coming-next is always cornbread. The coming-next is always the table. The coming-next is always onward.

Onward. Year nine. The table grows. The food stays. The love grows with the table. Earline watches from the wall. The cornbread is aggressively unsweetened. Amen.

Every year since Year 5, Chloe makes the pasta — that’s the tradition, and the tradition is sacred. This year she made it on the new stove, in the bigger kitchen, with the dinner lighting glowing and the twelve stools filled, and it was the same five-ingredient pesto pasta salad it’s always been: bright, fresh, built for spring, and somehow bigger than the sum of its parts. I sat at the counter and she served me, and if you want to know what eight years of work looks like, it looks exactly like that — your thirteen-year-old in a chef’s jacket, plating the ninth pasta, unbothered and brilliant. This is the recipe. Make it simple. Let it mean something.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 12 minutes | Total Time: 22 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

12 oz rotini or fusilli pasta
1/2 cup prepared basil pesto (store-bought or homemade)
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup fresh mozzarella pearls (or cubed fresh mozzarella)
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Instructions

Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook according to package directions until al dente, about 10–12 minutes. Drain and rinse under cold water to stop cooking and cool the pasta completely.
Toss with pesto. Transfer cooled pasta to a large mixing bowl. Add pesto and toss until every piece of pasta is evenly coated. Add an extra tablespoon of pesto if the salad looks dry.
Add the remaining ingredients. Fold in cherry tomatoes and mozzarella pearls gently so the tomatoes don’t burst. Taste and season with salt and black pepper as needed.
Finish and serve. Transfer to a serving bowl or platter. Top with freshly grated Parmesan. Serve immediately at room temperature, or refrigerate up to 2 days — re-toss before serving and add a splash of olive oil if needed to loosen.

Nutrition (per serving)

5-Ingredient Pesto Pasta Salad — The Ninth Pasta, Made by Chloe, at the Restaurant That Grew