Easy Pasta Salad with Creamy Caesar and Italian Dressing

Easy Pasta Salad Recipe

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Recipe Overview

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 8 minutes (concurrently)

Serves: 4-6

Ingredients Needed

For Pasta Salad

250g/8.8oz dried rotini or fusilli pasta
2 teaspoons salt
100ml/3.5oz Caesar dressing
60ml/2oz Italian dressing
250g/8.8oz tiny tomatoes or diced tomatoes or halved cherry tomatoes
1 Lebanese cucumber, diced, around 180g/6oz
100g/3.5oz pitted black olives
100g/3.5oz diced ham
100g/3.5oz diced turkey breast
120g/4oz feta or sharp cheddar cheese, small cubes
2 teaspoons Italian herbs
Salt and pepper for seasoning

Homemade Italian Dressing (makes around 75ml/2.6oz)

50ml/1.7oz extra virgin olive oil
25ml/0.8oz red or white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar
1 small garlic clove, crushed
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried Italian herb mix
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1 PASTA- Add salt (2 teaspoons) and pasta (250g/8.8oz) to a large pot of boiling water and boil the pasta until al dente (not too soft). Drain and rinse under cold water.

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Step 2 DRESSING - While the pasta is cooking, chop and prep the rest of the ingredients and make the Italian dressing and Caesar dressings. To make Italian dressing, add the olive oil (50ml/1.7oz), vinegar (25ml/0.8oz), sugar (1 teaspoon), garlic (1 small clove), oregano (1/2 teaspoon), herb mix (1/2 teaspoon), salt (3/4 teaspoon) and pepper (1/2 teaspoon) to a jar and shake to emulsify. Taste for seasoning.

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Step 3 MIX- In a bowl whisk the Caesar dressing (100ml/3.5oz) with the Italian dressing (60ml/2oz) and then toss with the cooled pasta, tomatoes (250g/8.8oz), cucumber (1 Lebanese cucumber, around 180g/6oz), olives (100g/3.5oz), ham (100g/3.5oz), turkey (100g/3.5oz) and feta (120g/4oz). Mix in Italian herbs (2 teaspoons) and season well with salt and pepper to taste.

Substitution notes:

French vinaigrette dressing also works well in place of Italian dressing.

Personal Note

I mentioned that I don't often make pasta salad because while Mr NQN likes it, I don't eat it that often. But I try and make it every now and then because he loves it so much. "I made pasta salad!" I told him when I made this. "Hang on, what?" he asked, surprised, as I'm not normally excited about pasta salad but I really loved this one.

I had an incident recently where I was misheard. I don't know about you but I use voice dictation a lot on my phone. Except iphone dictation is terrible and sometimes I have to speak in an American accent to be understood.

One day I received an email from a hotel I was working with to become an ad partner for my content. Sometimes you can license your content to hotels or restaurants to run ads and this is a nice little earner. So I asked my contact to ask the hotel to contact me to do that. Except dictation changed it to ask if they wanted to be my "Adult partner" instead of "Ad partner"!

So naturally my contact emailed the hotel enquiring about them being my adult partner!

I saw the email and started laughing. At first I thought it was my contact but then realised that it was me and that terrible dictation!