Martha Stewart's 5 Favorite Pasta Salad Recipes & Tips

So I thought I'd show you how to make a very simple yet tasty spring pasta salad. Now, into the bowl, we are going to put beautiful cherry tomatoes, three quarters of a pound. I have some asparagus blanching in water. Just cook them until they're just tender and they're still bright green. And now I'm they're in an ice bath so that they stop the cooking to dry them off. So these can be cut on a diagonal like this. So this will all go right into the bowl with the tomatoes and the pasta is cooking. It takes about somewhere around seven to eight minutes so we can drain it. You have to make it cold. So now we have this and we can let this just drain a little bit into the bowl. Some lemon zest and the juice of two lemons. And we have olive oil and your feta cheese and your beautiful watercress, just the leaves and pasta that goes right in. And you have a colorful, healthy pasta salad. This delicious whole wheat penne pasta with kalamata olives and lemon. So drain your pasta, shake out all the hot water and let the pasta cool. So these olives should just be chopped up. Now in a big flat skillet, heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. And we're going to put two cloves of garlic, crush that garlic, bruise it a little bit and add that to your oil. And we're going to have, according to your taste, four anchovy fillets. And they should just be coarsely chopped and a lot of capers. And we will use like a large, maybe a third of a cup or so. Now reduce the heat. Don't burn anything and just add the capers. Now add your olives. You're only going to cook this for a couple minutes. Don't overcook. The olives don't need to be cooked a lot. Maybe for two minutes or so. Put some peel right into the olives. The zest of one lemon. And we're also going to add the juice of the lemon. And now we're just going to mix it with the pasta. You can just put the pasta right into the pan. So just toss your pasta like this. Add your cheese. Add your flat leaf parsley. Pour this all into a big serving bowl or onto a platter. And here you have it. Jane, the macaroni is done. Oh, goody. Usually I don't rinse my pasta in cold water, but because it's been cooked in salted water and because I want it cold to make into macaroni salad, I ran a little bit of cold water over it. I like cucumbers in it because it adds a little crunch and a little odd flavor. But what I like to do is take the seeds out of the cucumber. You've got to be kidding. No, I do not. It's easy. You can take a knife like this and just cut the cucumber in quarters lengthwise and just gently cut out the seeds. I am roasting the peppers right on the open flame. She reported that to Steve, who's out of the barbecue. And we have one yellow pepper that's been cored. Actually, this is an orange pepper. And all the seeds removed. And you cut it like again. No, I know this is fine. This is fine. Yep. I don't want it too much smaller than that. So one long pickling cucumber, a Japanese cucumber like this is plenty. We have some lovely chives already cut up and the peppers. Once the skin is entirely blackened like that, I wrap it up in a piece of paper towel, I say. I say. And this sweats the skin, the black skin off the red flesh. So once this has a chance to just steam a little bit, Jane, look, I use the paper towel to pull off that skin. And look how beautiful it is. Well, that's a lot of people put this underwater and they rinse off all the pepper taste for the dressing, for the macaroni. I always like to squeeze a fresh lemon right into the cooked macaroni on top of the vegetables. Of course, don't forget salt and pepper. Oh, this is so good. This macaroni. I'm just draining the pasta. We're using a pound of very nice medium sized shell pasta. And we want to make sure that we cool it off completely because we're going to make a cold pasta salad with this in the skillet. We're going to saute some beautiful, fresh, small leeks that we found at the farmer's market. Pretty fresh corn. I'm going to slice it right into the dish, see if I can keep it there. It's so easy to take corn off the cob like this. It'll pick up all the flavors of the rest of the ingredients and be very nice. Now the pasta looks good, doesn't it? This has a little bit of steam left in it. Just that touch of oil just to make it glisten. Add your corn. Now, this is two and a half cups of corn kernels, about four to five ears of corn, depending on the size of the ears. You're just going to really cook this until the corn is cooked. Add a little bit of freshly ground black pepper. And if you like a large pinch of crushed red pepper flakes. And I'm using egg shaped cherry tomato. The tomatoes can go right in about a pint of cherry tomatoes. A half a cup of basil leaves that you can just tear. You can use opal basil or purple basil. Squeeze lemon juice. Just a quarter of a cup. Wish you could smell this. Mm, it's really, really nice. So there, isn't that pretty? That gets added right to the pasta. Now, remember, if you're not on a diet, you can add some of your favorite cheese, a ricotta salata. This is a sheep's milk cheese. And just all over the top as just a little authentic Italian touch and just serve this right away. You want to start with that. OK, and I'm just cutting some cauliflower into sort of small florets because you'd want it to sort of match the shape of your shell. And then that's just going to go all onto this. And you don't mind a little crust on these croutons? No, I like to use the crust because I think you should use every bit. I mean, you could make those the day before as well if you wanted to. It's great with day old bread. I think it's a good usage for that. So they're just going to go in there and then onto that tray. We're going to put one can of drained, rinsed and drained chickpeas in a single layer. So you could use dry if you have them. You could soak them. You could soak them into that as well. If you want to make a pasta in a few minutes, pasta in a pinch. This is what you do. And then I'm going to add probably two tablespoons, just a drizzle. I eyeball it, but it's about two tablespoons of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. And I love this dish as well, just as a side, actually. It's really delicious. I was eating it in the kitchen. I hope you were. I hope we're not short. No, a little olive oil on it. No, they just go in dry. Yeah. And they only need 10. This goes in for 25 minutes and they just go in for 10. So they can go in at any time. I think there's one in there already done. So. So 10 minutes. Till crisp. Yeah. Just until it's like, you know, I think we have one in here. I think we've got some cauliflower and chickpeas in there. So we've drained the pasta. The trick to good pasta, as you know, is to salt it in the water when you're before you cook it. Oh, the chickpeas get like crunchy. Yeah, they're really crunchy. It's delicious. They like give you a little bit of chew. So we're going to put that straight in here. If you want to put that in. So right with the shell. Right with the shells. Once that pasta has been drained, this goes straight in. Mm. Which is so nice. And they smell so good. And then that gets a stir. And we put in two tablespoons. I think you've already oiled this pasta, but we put a bit more in. Just put like one. Two tablespoons in. Plus the parsley. About three tablespoons of chopped parsley. And let's give that a good stir. And then about the ricotta. The ricotta. Well, we can actually put that on top. Actually, we serve it. We can serve it now and put that on top with the croutons. Oh, OK. So let's put it on this plate. Great. So you can serve it family style or just individually. It doesn't matter. But I like it family style. And you could serve it out of the pot. Yeah. If you're plating. But but it's so pretty when you put it on the platter. So pretty. Boy, how beautiful. See, look, it's so generous that we sit like this. That's a lot. So this serves like four people to six. Yeah. OK. And then the croutons, we're just going to put those on top. And if you just want to sprinkle those and then just like a dollop of that on top. And I would suggest serving a bit more ricotta to the table so they can help themselves. And that's the dish.