Italian pasta salad

Adya has started talking a lot off late. So it’s insanely cute when he comes up with new stuff & says new stuff. Whenever he does something for which he deserves some form of punishment, I send him to a corner in the house. While this has been working for a long time now, I can also see that he tries pushing his boundaries by smiling & trying to get away with the whole situation. However, once he understands the tone and the air, he quietly goes to the corner. While, he says please, thanks & sorry easily, I have noticed that he doesn’t quite easily tell sorry when he’s sitting all grumpy in the corner. However, I always go close to him after a few minutes (once I have cooled down too) & encourage him to come to me, hug it out and resolve things. More often than not, this works wonderfully and I am hoping this works for another few years atleast :). However, a few days back he suddenly asked me to go to the corner (Amma, tharner). I asked him what mistake I made and he said ‘Amma, mistake.. go tharner..’. So I went and sat in the corner. He came close to me & said ‘Amma.. wait wait..’ (I tell him wait here & when you are ready to resolve, let me know) and went to the hall. He came peeping to see after a minute or so and asked ‘Amma, ready??’ and when I said i was ready, he perhaps thought it was too soon to reconcile and said ‘Amma, wait wait’ and then after a few minutes, came to me hugged me & said sorry. Got me some of his toys & we both sat there and started playing :). It was one of the cutest things I saw in the recent times & my heart totally melted. Of course, reading it might not seem all that cute but the whole scene was genuinely very cute. But I also increasingly understand the responsibility of being a parent/ an adult and how saying things, reacting to things are being absorbed by him. In a lot of ways, I truly understand how children make parents better people in the world :).

Anywho, my friend Accu had us over to her place many months back where she had served this kickass pasta salad. I checked with her for the recipe & tried it out. It came out so well. The only drawback for me with this salad is that we need to do a bit of early prep (we normally don’t have moz balls at home). But other than that, it’s pretty much usual kitchen ingredients & it tastes soooooo good. The best part is it’s such a wholesome meal on the nutritional aspect as well as the tummy aspect. D really likes this salad now & whenever he has to take salad to work, this is the model salad that comes to his mind :D.

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Italian pasta salad

Ingredients

• 1 cup pasta
• 1 big onion
• 1 big capsicum
• 12-15 nos black olives
• 8-10 nos cherry tomatoes
• 125 gms baby mozarella
• a handful basil leaves
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 tsp dried italian herbs/ oregano
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 3/4 tsp dried red chilli flakes
• 1.5 tsp maple syrup

Instructions

1. Cook the pasta as per package instructions in a hot pot of water with some salt/ olive oil added in. Once the pasta is cooked, drain the water & quickly rinse the pasta in cold water so as to stop the cooking process. Set it aside. 

2. Finely chop the onion, capsicum. Quarter the cherry tomatoes & black olives. 

3. In a large bowl, add all the veggies - onion, capsicum, tomatoes. Also add the cooked pasta, mozarella balls & roughly torn basil leaves. 

4. Also add all the seasonings - olive oil, dried italian herbs/ oregano, salt, freshly ground black pepper, dried red chilli flakes & maple syrup. 

5. Mix everything well. Check & adjust the seasonings as per taste. 

6. Cover with a lid & chill the salad for a few hours so that all the seasonings soak up well. 

7. Take it out an hour before you want to serve & serve cold. 

Recipe Notes

1. You can tear up the mozarella balls before serving. 
2. Fresh basil leaves are optional. I like the flavour it adds & I always have a fresh stock of these thanks to my mil's gardening efforts. 
3. I usually add 2 tsp maple syrup since I like all my salads a bit on the sweeter side :D.
4. Also, you can use any sweetener - brown sugar, sugar, honey. Anything works fine.
5. There is a difference in taste (as per me) when you chop the ingredients long and thin vs small and tiny. I like the small & tiny for this. 
6. Also of course, if you don't have cherry tomatoes you can use the regular ones. But there's something about cherry tomatoes in a salad. 

Stepwise pictures

Prep the veggies & cook the pasta. Then in a large bowl, add the cooked pasta, the veggies – onion, capsicum, cherry tomatoes, black olives, roughly torn basil leaves & mozarella balls. Also add in all the seasoning – red chilli flakes, freshly ground black pepper, salt, dried italian herbs/ oregano, maple syrup & olive oil.

Mix everything well. Check & adjust the seasonings as per taste. Close the bowl with a lid & chill for a few hours for the seasoning to incorporate well with the pasta & the veggies.

1 hour before serving, keep the salad out at room temperature. Serve cold.