Pasta salad and buffalo chicken dip

Welcome to 7th Kitchen!

Normally, pasta salad is something on the side. But at my place, pasta salad can be a main dish for dinner also. I learned this pasta salad from a friend whom I met when I was living in California. She is German and she now lives in Germany but we keep in touch and actually we visited her this summer in Germany.

She brought this salad once for a BBQ party and I really liked it so I asked her for a recipe.

She also told me that it is OK to share her recipe in this blog so I am sharing her pasta salad recipe today.

Ingredients

Bow-tie Pasta 400g

Garlic 2 cloves

Chili pepper flakes 1/2 tea spoon

Sun dried tomato about 8 slices

Pine nuts 1/4 cup

Parmesan cheese 2/3 cup

Arugula 2 cups

Olive Oil about 4 tea spoons

balsamic vinegar (optional)

1. Roast chopped garlic and chili peppers in olive oil. Set aside & let it cool

2. Cook pasta, drain and set aside.

3. chop sun dried tomatoes, roast pine nuts in a pan without oil, grate Parmesan cheese

4. Mix sun dried tomatoes, roasted pine nuts, Parmesan cheese and arugula into pasta.

5. Pour olive-oil garlic mixture over it, add salt and pepper & more olive oil if you like. Also, you can add balsamic vinegar if you like.

I used a packaged arugula blend so mine has a little bit of red cabbage in it also.

This is a great garlicky pasta.

For the side dish, I made buffalo chicken dip. I got this recipe from Frank's Red Hot Sauce website. Here is the link to the page.

We like to eat this dip with tortilla chips.

Those two dishes are great for party and gathering. Please try them and let me know what you think!