Salad Days: Perky macaroni salad with mozzarella and toasted cashews

If you’re anything like me in your kitchen habits, at any given point you will have half a packet of macaroni in a cupboard, or some forgotten tagliatelle, fusilli, and more tucked behind those.

Elbow macaroni is the chief ingredient in this easy weeknight salad. Supporting it are straightforward ingredients including baby tomatoes, cucumber and celery, and it’s given a lift with tiny cubes of mozzarella and toasted cashews. For me, the dressing is important, and this one is really zesty.

The pasta doesn’t have to be elbow macaroni. I chose it because I think its shape looks attractive in a pasta salad. But any small pasta shapes will do, whether fusilli, shells, rigatoni or whatever you can find.

The dressing is an important factor in a pasta salad. I mixed double-cream yogurt with mayonnaise and added finely chopped mint, then stirred in some lavender vinegar, finishing it with salt and black pepper.

I suggest you cook the pasta in the morning, drain and refrigerate it, so that all you have to do when supper time comes is prepare the other ingredients and assemble the salad.

Tony’s perky weeknight pasta salad with a minty dressing

(Serves 3 to 4 as a meal, more as a side-dish)

Ingredients

Half a packet of uncooked elbow macaroni

1 red onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 celery stalk, diced

20 baby Roma tomatoes, halved

1 cup of peeled and diced cucumber

1 green pepper, diced

½ cup fresh mozzarella, diced small

½ cup cashews, toasted and crushed

For the dressing:

4 Tbsp mayonnaise

4 Tbsp double-cream Greek yogurt

2 Tbsp chopped mint

2 Tbsp lavender vinegar, or a similar good-quality vinegar

Salt and black pepper to taste

Method

Start in the morning or the night before: boil a pot of plenty of water, lightly salted, and add the pasta all at once when it is boiling rapidly. Immediately stir the bottom with a wooden spoon or spatula to stop the pasta from clumping.

Boil until al dente, about 9 to 10 minutes. Drain and leave to cool. When it’s cool, drizzle olive oil over, shake it a few times, and refrigerate it until it is very cold.

When you remove it from the fridge later, use the back end of a spoon or fork to carefully separate the pasta, which may have collected in places. A little shake here and there will solve the problem.

Peel and chop the red onion, garlic and celery. Halve the baby tomatoes, dice the cucumber and green pepper, and cut the mozzarella into small cubes. 

Toast the cashews in a dry pan, then remove them to a board and crush them, just a little. If some are intact, that’s okay. The crushed bits will add some crunch to the salad.

Mix the mayonnaise and yogurt very well, then chop the mint finely and stir it in. Add the vinegar, season with salt and black pepper, and stir well.

Fold the dressing throughout the salad with a rolling action (hence, folding) so as not to break up any of the ingredients. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the Year award, in 2021 and 2023.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.