Summer Veggie Pasta Salad

Posted on: 15th July 2013

Posted in: Main dishes, Recipes, Salads, Weaning

This is my homemade vegetarian pasta salad recipe; perfect for the summer. It makes a lovely side accompaniment to a BBQ, and has a sweet taste thanks to the lovely moist dressing. I estimate this recipe would make enough for 12 generous servings as a side dish. It’s nice and quick to make – cheap too, as it contains no meat. So it will make your veggie friends and your pocket happy.

Ingredients

• 250g dry pasta (fusili, penne or farfalle works nicely)

• 1/2 courgette

• 1 pepper

• 1/2 onion

• 150 ml water

• 100ml red wine vinegar (white would also work)

• 80g sugar

• 2 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 teaspoon mustard

• Shake of salt and pepper

Method

• Cook the pasta, then drain

• While pasta is cooking, cut the pepper and courgette into large chunks and lightly fry with a dribble of olive oil, under the courgette are golden

• chop at onion and add to the courgette/pepper mix

• Mix the pasta and veggies together and leave to cool

• To make the dressing, add the water, red wine vinegar, sugar, mustard, oil, salt and pepper into a jug and whisk together until the sugar has dissolved

• Add the dressing mixture to the pasta/veggies and chill in the fridge until you are ready to use it

Servings

This recipes makes 12 generous servings as a side dish

Cost per serving

The entire ingredients cost £2.25 (although I saved money on my courgette because it was homegrown) – that’s only 19p per serving!

Nutritional information

Each serving contains 120kcal, 2g fat, and 7g sugar

Tips / Serving suggestions

You don’t have to use courgettes and pepper. I have used chopped onion, cherry tomatoes and cucumber before – this would make the dish even cheaper to make, and requires no cooking apart from the pasta