Pesto and Feta Orecchiette Salad

After a particularly draining day at work, I was really craving some carbs last night.  For me, a hearty bowl of pasta is the perfect comfort food when I am stressed out.  While I wanted to indulge in my cravings, I decided to demonstrate some self-restraint by making a side dish of a pesto pasta salad.

To start, I put some pasta water on the stove to boil.  Although I had some penne on hand, I decided to use some of these beautiful dry orecchiette pasta that I picked up at Savenor's earlier in the week.  I find orecchiette so adorable in their resemblance of small ears and hope to someday learn to make them myself!

While my pasta was cooking, I prepared the other ingredients.  Bret helped me out by shucking some fava beans from their pods.  We had about half a dozen pods on hand but it didn't yield a lot of fava beans.  I'll definitely have to grab more the next time I make this dish.

I also washed and halved about half a carton of large cherry tomatoes.

And I also cubed some leftover feta cheese from my watermelon and feta bites that I made this past weekend.

When the pasta was done cooking, I drained it and gave it a quick rinse in cold water.  I put the fava beans in the already boiling pasta water.  The fava beans took only a few minutes to cook and I also gave them a quick rinse when they were done.

I put all the ingredients in a large bowl along with the final (and perhaps most important) ingredient - homemade pesto.  I made the pesto the previous weekend since I had a lot of leftover basil.  I made a simple pesto with basil, walnuts, parmesan cheese, olive oil, salt and pepper. 

The pesto orecchiette salad mad a perfect side dish to my pan-seared chicken breast (marinated in soy sauce, vegetable oil and Mongolian ginger BBQ rub) with sauteed greens (broccoli rabe, black beans, onions and red Russian garlic).

I loved all of the fresh flavors in the pesto and feta orecchiette salad and it was absolutely perfect for summer.  Best of all, there were lots leftover, which I'm looking forward to nibbling on during the rest of the week.

What kind of food do you crave after a long, stressful day?

Watermelon and Feta Bites

The first time I went to Vlora (a local Mediterranean restaurant), I fell in love with a delightful appetizer called the Watermelon and Feta Tidbit.  This dish contains watermelon, feta, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and parsley.  While none of the ingredients are particularly exotic, the combination of flavors are really vibrant and this dish always really stood out to me.

This past weekend, I decided to recreate this dish for Bret's dad's birthday party, which would be a casual get-together with his family where we would be grilling and eating all day by the pool.  When I volunteered to help make something for the party, Bret's mom suggested that I make a light appetizer and I thought this was the perfect opportunity to finally make my version of the watermelon and feta appetizer.

The day before the party, Bret purchased a watermelon and cubed it for me while I was out at a girls golf outing.  Bret creatively scooped out a little at the top of each watermelon cube to make room for the feta cheese.

The next day, at the party, I cubed out pieces of a firm feta cheese.

The feta cheese was placed into the hollowed-out section of the watermelon.

Bret chopped up some mint.

And I drizzled the watermelon and feta bites with balsamic vinegar.

Finally, each cube was topped with a bit of the chopped mint.

Like Vlora's version of the dish, I really loved the flavor combination of watermelon and feta but I think the substitution of mint over parsley made it even better.  In the future, I will probably cube the watermelon even smaller and maybe drizzle the balsamic on the watermelon before putting the feta on it for a prettier presentation.  But overall, I was pretty happy with this dish, especially when it got a lot of compliments from Bret's family and requests to make this again in the future.

What dish have you tried in a restaurant that you just had to recreate at home?