Bow Tie Pasta Salad

Dog days of August. Hot, flat, not moving. The pool smells like maximum strength sunscreen and the children are in full chaos mode — the particular flavor of late-summer child chaos where they have been out of school for two months and everyone is slightly feral. I love them for it. I watch them jump off the diving board one after another and I think about what I know about childhood: that it is very short, that a lot of it is invisible to the adults in the room, that someone paying attention matters enormously.

Phone call with Matt this week. He coaches baseball at his kids' school in Springfield and he was talking about his team — one kid who keeps striking out, who he thinks is trying too hard, who needs to just relax his grip. "You can't hit if you're white-knuckling the bat," he said. I said that is also true of teaching. He said he had not thought about it that way. We talked for forty-five minutes. I forget sometimes that Matt is worth talking to. He is easygoing in the way that good people sometimes are — it looks like simplicity but it is actually a kind of wisdom.

Made a cold sesame noodle dish this week — spaghetti (Aldi, a dollar ten), peanut butter, soy sauce, sesame oil (a small bottle from the international aisle, three dollars but it lasts forever), rice vinegar, garlic, a little sriracha, sliced green onions. Cooked the noodles, ran cold water over them, tossed them with the sauce while still cold. Ate at room temperature with a cucumber sliced thin on top.

Under two fifty for a bowl that I ate twice a day. Cold food in August is fundamentally correct. The peanut butter sauce has this quality where it coats everything and then you eat it and your mouth is a little bit on fire and a little bit savory and it is very hard to stop. I made it twice. I am going to make it for the blog. August needs more cold noodles.

I made the cold sesame noodles twice that week, but the truth is the whole thing got me thinking about cold pasta salads in general — the way you can make a big bowl, leave it in the fridge, and just eat from it whenever the heat makes actual cooking feel like a bad idea. This bow tie pasta salad is that same principle: cook the noodles, cool them down, build a sauce that clings and coats, and let the fridge do the rest. It’s what I’ll be making for the pool days, for the feral-children days, for any afternoon where the answer to “what’s for dinner” needs to be something I already thought of six hours ago.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 25 min (plus chilling) | Servings: 6

Ingredients

12 oz bow tie (farfalle) pasta
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cup cucumber, diced
1/2 cup black olives, sliced
1/2 cup red bell pepper, diced
1/3 cup red onion, finely diced
1/2 cup pepperoni or salami, chopped (optional)
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan or cubed mozzarella
1/2 cup Italian dressing (store-bought or homemade)
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
Salt and black pepper to taste
Fresh parsley or basil, chopped, for garnish

Instructions

Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook bow tie pasta according to package directions until al dente, about 10–11 minutes. Drain and rinse under cold running water until completely cooled.
Prep the vegetables. While the pasta cools, halve the cherry tomatoes, dice the cucumber and bell pepper, slice the olives, and finely dice the red onion.
Combine. In a large bowl, toss together the cooled pasta, tomatoes, cucumber, bell pepper, olives, red onion, pepperoni (if using), and cheese.
Dress it. Pour the Italian dressing and red wine vinegar over the salad. Sprinkle in the dried Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper. Toss well until everything is evenly coated.
Chill. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving — an hour is better. The pasta will absorb the dressing as it sits; if it looks dry before serving, add another splash of Italian dressing and toss again.
Serve. Garnish with fresh parsley or basil. Serve cold, straight from the fridge.

Nutrition (per serving)

Bow Tie Pasta Salad — Cold Noodles for the Dog Days