Lemon Herb Mediterranean Pasta Salad

Miya is five months old and has discovered the concept of solid objects. She grabs everything — my hair, my earrings, the spoon I am using to stir miso soup, the cat's tail. The cat is handling this with more grace than I expected, which is to say she has only hissed twice. I introduced Miya to rice this week — a tiny bit of rice cereal mixed thin, offered on a baby spoon. She wore most of it. Some of it went in. When I called Fumiko to report that Miya had eaten rice for the first time, Fumiko said, "Finally," as if five months of exclusive breast milk had been a personal affront.

The heat arrived in Portland this week — ninety-three degrees on Thursday, which for Portland is a crisis. Our apartment does not have air conditioning because Portland apartments are built by people who believe air conditioning is for the weak, and we spent three days melting. I made hiyashi chuka — cold ramen noodles with julienned cucumber, ham, egg crepe, and a sesame-soy dressing — which is the Japanese answer to "it is too hot to cook anything that requires heat." It is served cold, assembled cold, eaten cold, and it saved my life on Thursday when the kitchen thermometer read eighty-eight degrees and I could not imagine turning on the stove.

I wrote a blog post about hot-weather cooking — about the Japanese genius for cold noodle dishes, for meals that refresh instead of warm, for the understanding that food should respond to the body's needs, not just the tongue's desires. My readers in the South wrote to say they appreciated the perspective. My readers in Portland wrote to say they, too, were dying. Solidarity in sweat.

Brian and I went for a walk along the Willamette on Saturday evening, when the heat finally broke. We pushed Miya in the stroller and did not talk about anything difficult. We just walked. The river was gold in the late light and people were kayaking and someone was playing a ukulele on the esplanade and Portland was doing its thing — being beautiful and weird and free. I held Brian's hand. He let me. It was not a grand gesture. It was a hand in a hand on a summer evening, and I will take it.

Hiyashi chuka was the hero of our ninety-three-degree Thursday, but it’s a dish that requires a few specialty ingredients I don’t always have on hand—and after writing about Japanese cold noodle genius all week, I started thinking about how the same logic applies to a Mediterranean pasta salad. Boil the pasta, let everything cool, toss it cold, and walk away. This lemon herb version has been my backup all summer: it takes twenty minutes of actual effort, it waits patiently in the fridge, and it tastes like exactly the kind of thing you want to eat on a gold-lit evening when the heat has finally, mercifully, broken.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 25 min (plus 30 min chilling) | Servings: 6

Ingredients

12 oz rotini or penne pasta
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1 English cucumber, quartered and sliced
1/2 cup kalamata olives, pitted and halved
1/3 cup thinly sliced red onion
3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons fresh basil, chiffonade
1 teaspoon dried oregano
Zest of 1 lemon
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about 1 large lemon)
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more for pasta water
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook pasta according to package directions until al dente. Drain, rinse under cold water until completely cool, and shake off excess water.
Make the dressing. In a small bowl or jar, whisk together the lemon zest, lemon juice, olive oil, minced garlic, Dijon mustard, dried oregano, salt, and pepper until emulsified. Taste and adjust salt if needed.
Combine the salad. In a large bowl, combine the cooled pasta, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, olives, and red onion. Pour the dressing over the top and toss well to coat everything evenly.
Add cheese and herbs. Gently fold in the crumbled feta, chopped parsley, and basil. Try not to over-mix—you want some of the feta to stay in chunks.
Chill and serve. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving. This allows the flavors to meld. Toss again before plating and add a little extra drizzle of olive oil if the pasta has absorbed the dressing.

Nutrition (per serving)

Lemon Herb Mediterranean Pasta Salad — The Cold Dish That Got Us Through the Heat Wave