Gentleman’s Salad

Servings:

There’s a pretty obvious reason this is called a gentleman’s salad, and it isn’t because it is reserved for some sort of ‘gentlemen only’ club. It’s because this is the pasta salad you already know and love, with the delightfully kitschy addition of farfalle – ‘bow tie’ pasta. You can use any short pasta you have in the pantry, but I love the way the peas occasionally overlap the bow ties to form patterns, and the mint blooms forth like mini corsages.

Ingredients

▢ 500 g (1 lb 2 oz) fresh or frozen broad beans
▢ 400 g (14 oz) farfalle
▢ 4 cups (560 g) frozen peas
▢ 100 g (3½ oz) snow peas (mangetout)
▢ 100 g (3½ oz) crumbly feta
▢ finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
▢ 2-3 garlic cloves crushed
▢ ⅓ cup (80 ml) olive oil
▢ 1 large handful of mint leaves

Instructions

Put the broad beans in a heatproof bowl. Pour boiling water over them and let them stand for 5 minutes.
Pop them out of their skins and set aside.
Meanwhile, bring a big saucepan of well-salted water to the boil. Add the pasta and cook according to the packet instructions, adding the peas and snow peas during the final 2 minutes. Drain.
Crumble the feta into a small bowl, then mix in the lemon zest and juice, garlic and olive oil, to make a dressing. Season with plenty of cracked black pepper.
While still warm, toss the pasta, broad beans, peas and half the dressing together to allow the flavours to get to know each other.
At the very last minute, drizzle with the remaining dressing, add the mint and serve.

Notes

Tips

Leafy herbs such as mint need very little heat to help infuse their fragrance and flavour into starchy stuff like pasta. Popping the mint in at the very last minute will keep it vibrant while giving the salad an overall brightness, too.

To get extra life out of your pasta salad, store it in a colander over a mixing bowl, or in the colander part of your salad spinner, in the fridge. This’ll help stop the bottom pasta getting soggy, and means you can just plonk it all back into the mixing bowl to serve up the next day, adding extra mint for another fresh kick. Pull it out of the fridge at least 15 minutes or so before serving, to keep it from feeling fridge-cold on the teeth.

Shortcut

This is a great pasta salad to make with left-over pasta. It works best with any short pasta shape – from penne to macaroni, and even orecchiette. Just pour a little boiling water over the cooked pasta to give it a new lease on life, leave to warm through a little, then proceed with the rest of the recipe.

Recipe from In Praise of Veg (Murdoch Books)