Antipasto Pasta Salad - Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes comma with antipasto pasta salad that's right and antipasto is a cold platter of meat cheese and vegetables which is served at the start of a meal before the pasta and other courses but to save some time I thought we would add the pasta right to the antipasto to turn it into a complete meal all by itself and while like any pasta salad you could serve this as a side dish I really don't think you're gonna need to as this really was extremely satisfying so with that let's go ahead get started with one of the most important factors to successfully making this salad and that would be the way we cut up the ingredients which I will demonstrate on this salami and to prep this what I'm gonna do is take a stack and cut it in half and then we'll lay one half over the top of the other at which point we'll turn it and proceed to slice down into very very thin strips or if you want to get fancy you could call it a julienne and because I'm using a corkscrew shaped pasta by cutting all our ingredients like this or as close as we can get to this they're gonna very easily wrap themselves around the pasta so when we eat it we're gonna get all that goodness on every fork full so that's how we'll do our assorted salami zand pepperonis and then we'll attempt to do the exact same thing with our cheese which for me will be this sliced provolone and because we're starting with a bigger piece I'm gonna go ahead and cut this into thirds instead of in half like the salami because one of the rules of antipasto pasta salad is that none of the ingredients should be cut longer than the pasta itself so we'll go ahead and cut that into nice thin strips as shown and then attempt to do the same with every other ingredient right whether it's peppers or onions or olives or whatever we're using we'll do our best to cut them into his thinnest strips as we can ok so how we cut the ingredients is the first big secret to success and now we'll move on to the next two which both have to do with how we cook our pasta and the first one is make sure we boil our fusilli in very very well salted water and I can't stress that enough so please solve that water very aggressively and then the other secret is make sure we cook our pasta all the way until it's done all right I have no idea where people got the idea that under cooking pasta was a good idea for salad but it's not it's a terrible idea so I really think we should cook at the full time on the package or until whatever time you determine it perfectly ready to eat and it's surprising how many times I've heard that my career from actual chefs even in places like culinary school and apparently their thinking was that it would soften up as a SAP with a dressing which is sort of will if it's undercooked since it is still absorbing moisture but that texture is never as good as if it was just cooked all the way in this boiling water and then what we'll do once we have determined it's been cooked to perfection is go ahead and drain it very well but do not under any circumstances rinse it okay just drain it and put it back on the pot and while assist they're draining it is not a bad idea to give it a stir - with a spoon which is gonna help release a lot of that residual heat and then what we'll do is just let that sit for about five or ten minutes which is just about how long it's going to take us to make our dressing and that's gonna start by adding one crushed garlic clove plus one and she'll be filleted to a large mixing bowl and we'll go ahead give all that a quick bash you at the end of our whisk or a fork or the back of a spoon if you're in a hurry and then once we have that all broken up we'll go ahead and add one spoon of Dijon plus two spoons of mayonnaise followed by whatever vinegar we're gonna use here which for me was a nice red wine vinegar although if you wanted something a little bit on the sweeter side you can use balsamic or of course a combination we will also want to add a pinch of salt as well as some freshly ground black pepper and you could do some cayenne also but my pepperoni was really spicy so I didn't and then we'll finish up with a spoon of dry oregano as well as a little bit of dry time and that's it we'll give this a quick mix before we add our oil and by the way if you or yours do not like anchovy add it anyway when this dressings done there's no way in a million years anyone could tell there's anchovy in it and it really does enhance the flavour so if you have to sneak it in in secret go ahead and the same goes for that a little bit of mustard our you're not really gonna taste it but it is important and that's it once that's whisk we'll go ahead and slowly drizzle in our olive oil while whisking constantly and what we do want to start off drizzly very slowly at the beginning after about a third of it has been incorporated and we can see that we have a decent amount of vacation underway we can start to pour a little more quickly and aggressively but as you're whisking make sure what you've poured in has been emulsified before you pour some more and above and beyond adding a little bit of flavor that mustard timeö we added really makes us emulsification a lot easier and if everything goes according to plan by the time the last of that oils been whisked in you should be looking at a beautifully smooth definitely not separated slightly thickened dressing this should coat a spoon like this it should hold some very sharp lines if you drag your finger across the back so that was perfect and of course you can taste and adjust if need be and what we'll do once at set is go ahead and transfer and our still pretty hot fusilli and we'll go ahead and stir that until it's thoroughly coated and because we didn't rinse it the surface of our pasta has a nice sticky layer of starch which is really gonna help it grab on to and absorb our dressing and then technically we should let this cool down to about room temp before we add the rest of the ingredients but I think it's perfectly fine to start adding some of our vegetable ingredients while it's still a little bit warm and for me those will include some finely sliced red onion some finely sliced jalapeno pepper or any fresh green pepper I'm also gonna do some pickle pepper in the former pepper Cheney and then I'm also gonna do a whole bunch of thinly sliced roasted red pepper which are fine from the jar but even better if you fire roast them and peel them yourself and which one did I use I'd rather not say and we'll go ahead and stir those in and then I went ahead and finished up with my vegetable additions by adding a jar of drained baby artichoke hearts which I quartered as well as some thinly sliced black and green olives which I think are also one of the big keys here all right those little bites a briny sharp flavor really helped bring all the other flavors together and with each addition and subsequent stirring this mixtures continuing to cool and hopefully by now all this is cooled down to room temp because we don't want to add our meats and cheeses to this while it's warm but mine was fine so I went ahead and transferred in my thinly sliced salami as well as some extra spicy pepperoni and then I finished up my meat additions with some ham at which point we'll give this all a very thorough mixing before we add our slice cheese all right that provolone is going to mix in a lot easier and a lot better and a lot more uniformly if everything else is mixed beforehand and also make sure you leave that stuff in the fridge until the last second right we want all those little strips cold and firm and obviously if you wanted to include other Italian meats and cheeses in this go ahead I mean you are after all the DJ Khaled of making your salad valid so as long as it's something that would normally appear on an antipasto platter it would be perfectly appropriate to add to this and that's it we'll go ahead and give this one last mix before we wrap it up and pop in the fridge for at least three or four hours or even overnight it's fine and while you could taste and adjust at this point it is always better to wait until this is cold and all those flavors have had time to come together so I went ahead and wrap that up and popped it in the fridge until I was ready for service and then what we'll do at this point is unwrap it and add our last two ingredients a whole bunch of freshly chopped Italian parsley and a pint of cherry tomatoes that I cut in quarters and I think both these ingredients are much better added at the last second that if we mix them in with the other ingredients okay we want that parsley nice and bright and green and we don't want that moisture pulled out of our tomatoes which is what would happen if we added them earlier and as we mix this you can really see why we cut our ingredients into the shape that we did which is what really makes it sell it's so user friendly and if I've only learned one thing doing this it's always be friendly to your users and of course after tossing we will give it a taste and we can adjust with more salt or oil or vinegar or whatever you think it needs but I'm happy to report mine was perfect so I went ahead and served that up in a wooden bowl and added a little touch of parsley to the top and yes to make it look nicer I did all the wood which is why it's glistening like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger you're welcome for the visual and that's it my antipasto pasta salad was ready to enjoy and that my friends was not only just a tremendously delicious pasta salad it was a tremendously satisfying and delicious meal all right if you had a hunk of crusty bread and a glass of wine I'm not sure what else you need but if you must insist on serving this as a side dish because that's just how your brain works I think this would be absolutely gorgeous with some grilled lemon and garlic marinated chicken breasts oh yes that would work nicely but regardless of whether you enjoy this as a side dish or a main course I really do hope you give it a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 436,940

Keywords: Antipasto, Pasta, Salad, macaroni, side, dish, picnic, deli, cookout, recipe, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking, salads, Italian, easy, 4th of july

Id: wds55gKLTtg

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 30 2020