Craving a taste of the Mediterranean? This video’s got you covered! Get the steps to make a hearty and flavorful pasta salad packed with grilled Italian sausage and fresh veggies —alongside an unexpected fruit. I’ll share secret tips to boost the flavor of both the pasta and the dressing, which will make this your new go-to dish for picnics, potlucks, or BBQs!
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bonss and noodles they hey what do you [Music] smell hey everybody Welcome to Chris Cooks today we are going to make a pasta salad I grew up on several versions of pasta salad this is kind of a combination of a few with a little flare of my own here’s mainly what we’re working with I am using bonsa pasta because we’re grain-free here you can use whatever pasta you want but shells that shape that is the key in my opinion uh we got fresh basil this is going to lean kind of on the Italian side I also have some Italian uh sausage this is a chicken sausage we have some figs the dressing is going to be uh lemon honey little olive oil some Dijon mustard just like a classic lemon vinegret and then a mix of vegetables some of the vegetables are going to get grilled some of them will be raw the onion this is a sweet onion that’s going to be raw zucchini mushrooms those will get grilled peppers tomatoes those will be raw first let’s start prepping our vegetables that are going to be grilled Cella mushrooms baby b of mushrooms those also work really well we’re going to cut the zucchini into planks which will then just get seasoned and grilled um makes it easy to deal with about I don’t know/ qu inch thick or so just like so the mushrooms they’re actually just going to go on the grill just like this so little bit of olive oil toss those around the coat all oil on each of these okay got fresh black pepper salt garlic powder about teaspoon of gar garlic powder and about a half a teaspoon of allspice once this is on the grill and gets cooked and chopped up in the salad the flavors will kind of even out toss the coat you know somewhat evenly but don’t stress it it’ll be fine once the grill comes up to temperature we’re going to grill the vegetables take them off and then we’re going to grill our chicken sausage while those things are grilling we’re going to cook the pasta so that we can have it ready for us my pasta water I always season it with with salt and vinegar either red wine vinegar or white wine vinegar and then I add olive oil we’ll get this cooked and then cooling off so that it’s ready for us when we assemble everything else what needs to be cooked is cooked so we are going to prep the rest of the ingredients we’ll start with our cherry tomatoes you can use whatever kind of tomato that you want but this is going to be um a couple handfuls of this cut in half those are yummy we have a yellow bell pepper great color to add to Summer dishes especially just a medium to small dice you don’t want big giant pieces but you don’t want it tiny either all right next onion we’re going to do a sweet videlia onion we’re going to dice this about the same size as the pepper figs this is kind of where I go a little bit off the rails for some people um if you are not a fan of [Music] fig I mean Heaven help you but you don’t have to use it it’s also can be hard to find for sure these are Castle vrono olives which are my favorite Olive I think all around um it’s a green olive but it’s not like the green olives you’re used to that have the pimento in them and it’s just my favorite snacking Olive I love adding it to salads I love just snacking on it I love the color we have our Olive brine for these we’re going to save that and use it with our dressing basil copious amounts get as many leaves as you can this is probably once it’s chopped it’s probably going to be a full cup the more you work basil it kind of bruises it and some of those tender flavors kind of go bitter a little bit we’re going to do just a little rough chiffonade here which is fancy for making ribbons just lay them out and then just kind of roll together together smaller leaves don’t need to be in there it’s fine and then just slice through then you get these ribbons you can do these ribbons chian is usually a little tighter this is just kind of sliced a little bit but it’s perfect for what we’re going for now we can cut up the ingredients that we cooked basil when it gets introduced to heat I mean it gives a big burst of flavor and that dissipates quickly depending on how sustained the heat is and uh how intense it is since this is just a little bit of warmth it’s going to bring some of that out mushrooms in half and then slice zucchini we’re going to cut down the center and then chop this way a little bit larger of pieces than we did with the onion and the pepper dressing time I’m going to make as much use as I can of every flavor and that includes the liquid from the grilled vegetables and the sausage also lemon if you’re adding lemon juice go ahead and use the zest you’re probably going to throw it away anyway and it does make a difference it really does invest in one of these guys a microplane I use this so much we’re going to use the zest from a full lemon here little lemon squeezers are supposed to get the seeds out it uh has varying levels of success in terms of weeding out the seeds so I use a little strainer here those probably two tablespoons of uh lemon juice that came out of that I’m going to match that with this brine tablespoon tablespoon and a half and then uh Dijon mustard the classic vinegret is vinegar olive oil Dijon mustard and then you know like salt and pepper so this is kind of a play on that we’re going to add about one and a half teaspoons of Dijon to it um I also add Honey B basically to all of my dressings this is going to be a full tablespoon to start pinch of salt little bit of black pepper and then a good fruity olive oil that we’re going to add about a two tablespoons so yeah classic Vin vret with vinegar my dressings always lemon juice or lime juice or orange juice some sort of citrus it just it just tastes better it’s just better in my opinion in with the dressing toss to coat this is an amazing dish on its own you don’t actually need the noodles even if you don’t want to add them I just want a little bit more substance to it and so we’ll add the pasta for us bons and noodles they hey what do you smell that is so fresh the flavor of it it is summer in a bowl give this one a try and let me know what you think would love to hear about it in the comments like subscribe tap the uh Bell for notifications to see our next video and make it for somebody that you care about