One of my standbys, especially when little baby potatoes are available by the bucketful, is this warm pesto-inspired potato salad. The little bitty potatoes and French (or green!) beans are briefly boiled, then rinsed into cold water to make sure they stay firm and wonderful instead of disintegrating into a mushy mess. Briefly boiled, so that when the temperature rises you don’t make things worse by running that stove for too long.
‘Tis the season for picnic-ready salads here in the ol’ U.S. of A, especially with July 4th coming up this weekend. And because nothing goes together with amateur pyrotechnic displays as well as easy-to-eat and easy-to-share food from a cooler, I’m here to help with a delicious garlic-filled pasta salad.
A bonus is that there is minimal stove time involved (just however long it takes to boil water and cook your pasta of choice) so you don’t have to sweat it out too much to put this together. This is vitally important when you live in a city where air conditioning is a luxury and not a given, despite outside temperatures regularly reaching rotisserie-levels. Seattleites insist that the heat wave will only last for about a month.