Add whatever vegetable is in your freezer to this simple pasta salad recipe
Adaptability. That’s what the world is requiring of us right now, and that’s certainly what we need in our recipes. Because who knows what we’ll find the next time we check our phones, open a paper, scroll through social media?
Will we want to go to the grocery store? Will we be able to? Just in case, I take comfort in knowing I can cook with what I’ve got around, and I want to stock up on things that will last.
Frozen vegetables are a godsend, really. They get a bad rap because if you don’t know how to cook them they can turn out mushier than you might like, but there are ways around that. One is to roast them at high heat. I’ve used that technique with frozen broccoli florets, with good results. One of the keys is something I recommend anytime you’re roasting vegetables that you want to get crispy-edged (and don’t you always?): preheating your baking sheet right along with the oven. It’s particularly effective with frozen vegetables; you leave them unthawed, and when they hit the pan, the water melts and evaporates in a flash, without time for it to get them soggy. The other tip — again, something that I always do when roasting vegetables — is to make sure there’s room for air to circulate around each item. That means they steam less and roast more.
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While the broccoli is roasting, you boil some pasta (You do have pasta in your pantry, don’t you?), and then when both are done you toss them together in a simple dressing, along with feta and almonds.
The combination seems born to work, and it does. But as I said, we need adaptability, and this recipe offers that, too. Use whatever frozen vegetable you might have on hand. My top picks would be Brussels sprouts or cauliflower, but peas or spinach (blanched instead of roasted) would work well, too. And if you’ve got anything green in the refrigerator — maybe you haven’t quite started eating from your freezer yet — here’s a good place to use it.
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