Warm Pasta Salad with Roasted Corn and Poblanos (Page 150)

RECIPE #1003

• Date: Monday, June 22, 2009 -- 7pm
• Location: Bloomington, IN
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companions: Mike M, Teresa, and Matty
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

We had Mike and Teresa over for fried chicken a few weeks back, and pasta salad seemed like an appropriate accompaniment. I started by roasting poblano and jalapeno chiles in the broiler, then peeling, seeding, and chopping them. I then toasted pumpkin seeds on the stove. I dry-roasted corn, then onion, then I cooked garlic and cumin in oil. I stirred together the chiles, corn, onions, and garlic oil along with chopped tomatoes, oregano, and cilantro. To this I added some cooked rotini and seasoned with salt and pepper. I topped the salad with the pumpkin seeds and some ricotta salata. This pasta salad was pretty tasty. It was a little too spicy for my wimpy taste buds, but no one else seemed to mind that too much. The flavors went together nicely -- it had a bit of a Mexican feel to it. The dry roasting of the corn and onion gave this dish a nice charred note, and the cheese helped to mellow out the spice. In addition to having a good array of flavors, this dish also had a diversity of textures. Having the pumpkin seeds, in particular, gave good textural contrast. This was a tasty pasta salad -- a little fussy to make, but enjoyable to eat.

The recipe is here.

Hello from Ohio! On Wednesday and Thursday of last week my special gentleman and I moved from one apartment in Bloomington to another. I am not going to lie and say that it was a fun way to pass the time -- it certainly wasn't -- but it's over now! On Friday we finished up a few errands and then headed to Ohio, where my special gentleman's family lives. Because we had such a small wedding, we didn't invite extended family, so my special gentleman's parents wanted to throw us a reception to celebrate with the whole extended family. The party was yesterday, and it was great to see everyone! More than 60 people came (so the party was actually bigger than our wedding!) -- family and friends of the family. Afterwards my special gentleman and I went for a walk through the neighborhood he grew up in and laughed about how many times that day someone asked us, "So, where are you living now?" I'm not sure people were prepared for how complicated the answer to that seemingly simple question is. "Well, right now we both live in Indiana. In the fall one of us will be in Indiana and the other in Michigan. In the spring one will be in Indiana and the other in California. We have an apartment we rent in Indiana and an offer on a house in Michigan, but since there is a delay with the house, we are also renting a house in Michigan...." We explained this many, many times, in varying levels of detail. Only one person was bold enough to say, "It doesn't really sound like a good way to start a marriage." I didn't appreciate that so much. Most people more or less understood the logic behind all this though, and wished us luck!

Today I had a mellow day. I got some work done, then tonight we had a family dinner at my special gentleman's grandma's house, which was rowdy and fun. We are in Ohio all week, then Saturday we are headed to England. What a summer!