PASTA SALAD WITH HALLOUMI & VEGETABLES

The sun was out today so Pascal, Arabella and I all voted to have a barbecue of burgers, sausages and pasta salad. Unfortunately it wasn't as sunny as we hoped - typical English weather - but at least it wasn't raining. 

This is a vegetable packed pasta salad that is really simple to make and it took about 25 minutes to prepare and cook.

Ingredients for 4 people:

150g pasta (any shape like penne, rigatoni, farfalle)

250g halloumi cheese, chopped into bite size pieces

150g pot of fresh pesto sauce

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 red / orange pepper, chopped

120g frozen peas

165g sweetcorn

3 spring onions, sliced

2 tbsp sour cream

2 tbsp lemon juice

70g black olives, pitted

1 tbsp olive oil

First of all cook the pasta in a pan of salted boiling water according to the packet's instructions (ours took 13 minutes).

For the final 3-4 minutes, add your frozen peas.

While this is cooking, fry the pepper in a tablespoon of olive oil for a couple of minutes so they soften and then put them in a large serving bowl.

Then fry the crushed garlic for a couple of minutes and add to the bowl with the pepper.

Continue to add the ingredients to the bowl. First the drained sweetcorn.

Then the spring onion and olives.

Once the pasta and peas are ready, rinse them under cold water and then add to the bowl.

Next add the sour cream, the lemon juice, pesto and season. Mix together well.

Just before you are about to eat, grill the halloumi for around 6 minutes (sorry I forgot to take a picture here, too busy fussing) and then cut into bits and add to the pasta salad. Finally serve and enjoy.

This is really good - colourful and delicious - by adding the sour cream it does not taste like your usual pesto pasta. There is such a variety of flavours that each mouthful tastes different. You could chop and change it, no surprise Arabella suggested using goat's cheese rather than halloumi and Pascal was temped to add some avocado. My attitude is "if it ain't broke, don't fix" and I can't wait to eat the tiny bit of leftovers tomorrow….unfortunately it was so good, not much remains!!