Easy Pasta Salad

A good pasta salad recipe can be used for almost any summer meal. The crowd favorite is a great addition to a picnic or potluck, it’s an ideal side dish for a cookout, and it makes a wonderful dinner for a hot night when you don’t want to stand over the stove for too long.

This version riffs on classic Italian pasta salad—it has the mozzarella cheese, cherry or grape tomatoes, and zesty Italian-dressing-like flavor you’d expect from the best deli-style salads—but it’s meat-free and full of delicious zucchini and fresh herbs. It also uses salty Kalamata olives in place of the usual wan black olives, and has banana peppers for a tangy kick. Feel free to adjust the ingredients based on what you like or have on hand. Add in sweet bell pepper, marinated artichoke hearts, or pickled red peppers; swap out the Parmesan cheese for crumbled Greek feta cheese, or the oregano for fresh parsley. (The best pasta salad is, of course, the one catered to your tastes—though you may want to adjust the lemon, vinegar, and olive oil to balance the flavors.) This recipe calls for orecchiette, but you can also make it with pretty much any short or round pasta, including penne, rotini, and macaroni. (It even works well with some tortellini if you want to get adventurous.) Once the pasta is cooked, don’t rinse it under cold water as some other recipes suggest. The starchy exterior of the warm pasta will add body to the vinaigrette, and the residual heat will help the pasta absorb all those big, bold flavors.

The one thing to remember is that while the dish is good when first made, it’s almost better after the ingredients sit together in the refrigerator for a few hours. So go ahead and prepare it a few hours in advance or even the day before your afternoon barbecue, but do let the cold pasta salad warm up just a bit outside the fridge before serving.