Pasta Salads are one of my favorite dishes to play around with as far as ingredients and flavors go. There’s no need to always make the same old boring pasta salad with Italian dressing. I adore the flavors of a cobb salad and loved using them in a potato salad, so I decided to try them in a pasta salad. It was easy and delicious, packed full of so many complimentary flavors.
I started with 1 pound of pasta cooked to al dente. Any shape will do, but I really like farfalle. Then I added some blue cheese vinaigrette. I used La Martinique Blue Cheese Vinaigrette Dressing which is one of my favorite dressings to use on salads and one of only a few bottled dressings that I really like.
I only mix about half the dressing in at this point and save the rest for tossing on just before serving. That way the pasta has a chance to really soak up some flavor, but you still have your pasta nicely coated with dressing.
Add some red onion, grape tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, bacon, blue cheese crumbles, and my very favorite- AVOCADO! All the wonderful flavors of a cobb salad are here. You could toss in some roasted chicken and make a full meal out of it. I love that during the hot summer months the definition of what constitutes a meal gets a little more lax. Everyone expects a huge meal in the fall and winter with a protein, at least a couple of sides, and some type of bread. But during the summer I’m perfectly content with a light salad or even a couple of hor d’oeuvres and a glass of wine for dinner.
If you can’t find a blue cheese vinaigrette, try mixing together regular blue cheese dressing with an Italian Vinaigrette or add some oil and vinegar to the blue cheese dressing.
