Salad can be many different things: a side dish or a main meal; vegetarian or containing meat; cold or warm.  This delicious pasta salad works both as a (vegetarian) meal in itself and as an accompaniment to barbecued meats.  Youngest son and I had it for supper the other night when my husband was at a meeting.  We nearly didn’t have any supper at all.  Just as we were sitting down to eat I dropped my glass of water on the granite work surface and it shattered into millions of pieces.  I was still finding tiny shards of glass the next day, including in my sandal, even though I had vacuumed and swept very thoroughly.  Fortunately though, I’d moved the bowl of salad to the table before dropping the glass so we were able to eat our supper without tearing our insides to shreds.

We ate this with some roasted asparagus spears.  At this time of year, my kitchen is hardly ever without British asparagus.  You have to make the most of the short season.

Pasta Salad with Tomatoes, Basil and Black Olives

Ingredients

• 175g dried pasta
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 4 sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained and sliced
• 225g cherry tomatoes, halved
• 4-6 spring onions, sliced
• 8-12 black olives, pitted and halved
• 8-12 fresh basil leaves, torn

Dressing

• 2 sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained
• 2 tbsp oil (from the sun-dried tomato jar)
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 garlic clove, peeled
• 1 tbsp sun-dried tomato paste
• pinch of sugar
• sea salt and black pepper
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• Basil leaves to garnish

Method

• Cook pasta until al dente, drain and refresh with cold water.  Turn into a large bowl and toss with the oil
• Add sun-dried tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, spring onions, olives and basil.  Toss
• Make dressing: put sun-dried tomatoes, oils, vinegar, garlic and tomato paste in a blender (I used my mini food processor) with the sugar, salt and pepper and blitz until fairly smooth
  

  Mini food processor

• Pour dressing over the pasta and toss well.  Ideally leave it for 1-2 hours for the flavours to infuse
• Garnish with basil

To roast asparagus:

Snap off the bottoms and lay the spears in rows on a roasting tray.  Drizzle over some extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle on some sea salt.  Put the tray in a hot oven (near the top of the Aga roasting oven) for 10 minutes, giving it a bit of a wiggle after 5 to move the spears around a little.  You can eat them hot like this, or let them cool then add a little lemon juice and black pepper, and maybe some shavings of parmesan to make another delicious salad.