By April arrived warm. The high Wednesday was seventy-eight degrees and the kitchen window has been open every afternoon since. The basil plant Mrs. Henderson gave me in January has grown so large I had to repot it on Saturday morning into a bigger terra cotta pot, which Mrs. Henderson also gave me — she had been holding it in the garage for, in her words, the day the basil outgrew the small one. Mrs. Henderson plans like a person who has been gardening for forty-five years, which she has.
The whole house has started smelling like basil all the time now. The smell hits you when you walk in the back door, and again when you walk through the kitchen, and again when you brush past the windowsill on your way to the sink. I have decided this is a smell I want my house to have for the rest of my life. The basil plant is the inheritance that has worked the best.
And spring food has arrived in the kitchen. The heavy winter soups have started giving way to the cold pasta salads, the bright sheet-pan dinners, the things you eat when the kitchen does not need to be heated up to feel like home. So Sunday I made a mandarin spinach bowtie pasta salad as the Sunday batch-cook, because the recipe had been sitting in my notebook for two weeks and because the weather called for it.
The recipe was an Averie Cooks one, but the dressing was where the work happened. Bowtie pasta cooked al dente and rinsed under cold water, fresh baby spinach, mandarin oranges drained from a can, slivered toasted almonds, fine-chopped green onion. The pasta and spinach got tossed in a homemade teriyaki dressing — soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, grated fresh ginger, minced garlic, a tablespoon of honey, a pinch of red pepper flakes. The mandarin oranges went on at the very end so they did not break apart, and the almonds got sprinkled on right before serving so they stayed crisp.
The math: a pound of bowtie pasta from Aldi $0.89, a 5-oz bag of fresh baby spinach $1.99, a 15-oz can of mandarin oranges $0.79, a 2-oz bag of slivered almonds $1.49 from the Walmart bulk bin, four green onions free from the windowsill plant, soy sauce and rice vinegar and sesame oil from the pantry collection I have been building all year. Total: about $5.40 for a big serving bowl that fed Mama and me for three lunches.
The technique I want to keep is the dressing. Whisk all the ingredients in a small bowl. Taste. Adjust. The proportions are: a quarter cup soy sauce, two tablespoons rice vinegar, two tablespoons sesame oil, a teaspoon grated fresh ginger, a clove of minced garlic, a tablespoon of honey, a pinch of red pepper flakes. The dressing is what turns a regular pasta salad into something that tastes like a deli salad. Make it once and you will not buy bottled dressing again.
Mama said, when she ate the salad Sunday night, baby, this is the kind of lunch I would buy at a deli. Cody, when I told him about it Saturday during the eleventh visit, said, Kay, you are running a deli now. He hit five months at the unit on Wednesday. He has signed up for a third program — a creative writing workshop run by a volunteer from the Tulsa Library, meeting Wednesday evenings for an hour. He said, very quietly during the visit, Kay, I am going to write a short story. I want to put that on the page because Cody has not written voluntarily since middle school, and the writing-coming-back is the kind of thing I want to mark in pencil so I can remember when it started.
The recipe is below, the way A Family Feast wrote it. The trick I want you to keep is the homemade teriyaki dressing — do not substitute bottled. The whisking takes ninety seconds and the difference is the difference. Add the mandarin oranges and almonds at the very end so they do not get soggy. Make this on a Sunday in April. Eat it for three lunches.
Mandarin Spinach Bowtie Pasta Salad with Teriyaki Dressing
Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 25 minutes (plus chilling) | Servings: 6
Ingredients
- 8 oz bowtie (farfalle) pasta
- 3 cups fresh baby spinach, roughly chopped
- 1 can (11 oz) mandarin oranges, drained
- 1/2 cup shredded carrots
- 1/3 cup sliced green onions
- 1/3 cup sliced almonds or cashews, toasted
- 1/2 red bell pepper, diced
- 1/3 cup teriyaki dressing (store-bought or homemade)
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Sesame seeds for garnish (optional)
Instructions
- Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook bowtie pasta according to package directions until al dente. Drain, rinse under cold water until fully cooled, and set aside.
- Prep the vegetables. While the pasta cooks, chop the spinach, dice the bell pepper, slice the green onions, and drain the mandarin oranges.
- Make the dressing. In a small bowl or jar, whisk together the teriyaki dressing, sesame oil, and rice vinegar until combined. Taste and adjust seasoning.
- Combine. In a large bowl, toss the cooled pasta with the spinach, mandarin oranges, carrots, bell pepper, and green onions. Pour the dressing over and toss well to coat everything evenly.
- Chill. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving — the flavors come together better the longer it sits. Overnight is ideal.
- Finish and serve. Just before serving, top with toasted nuts and a sprinkle of sesame seeds if using. Toss once more and serve cold.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 280 | Protein: 8g | Fat: 9g | Carbs: 42g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 420mg