Pasta e Ceci Salad

Good morning from a 64% dew point (I’m still learning what “dew point” means, though I know when it’s high, it means it’s wet outside). The city feels freakishly empty right now (probably because of the high dew point), but I think that it’s kind of nice to have it all to yourself. I’m getting an “only kid at camp who didn’t go on an end of summer trip” feeling, but my productivity has never been higher—something to think about!

I don’t believe in a fear-based messaging strategy, but I will say there are only three-ish weeks of summer left, which is prime “eat food on the beach” season (though I would also argue that the best month for that is September). Relatedly, I spend a lot of time thinking about what foods translate well to being eaten on a large stretch of sand in the hot hot sun with little to no refrigeration for hours at a time, perhaps even getting better with time, and I always come back to pasta salad. 

You know what they say: The best things in life are free, and the best pasta salad is also just pasta you make and then eat cold. I may have been the one to say that last part, but that doesn’t make it any less true. 

Trust me, it brings me no pleasure to say that one of the best pasta salads I have made in recent memory came from a Tupperware of leftover pasta, but this is very much the case. Sure, I was in the kitchen of a vacation rental, so I was more than a few ingredients shy of my ideal set up, but I like to think restraint yields creativity (necessity is the mother of invention, etc.).

I was cobbling together some weird odds and ends into something resembling a beach picnic: half a small block of white cheddar (questionable beach food), a green basket full of almost-too-soft strawberries, an almost-entirely-eaten bag of crackers, a Ziploc bag of cucumber spears I tossed with lemon and salt, some dried mango (never travel without it now) and seaweed snacks. In a moment of “will we have enough food for a 45-minute-trip to the beach?” panic, I also grabbed the rest of the previous night’s crude version of pasta e ceci, effectively pasta and chickpeas all dressed in red sauce. 

Before packing it up into a tote, I thought of my leftover pasta: Can I do better? While originally perfectly (lightly) sauced the night before, after tasting it I thought it could take a little something more. I thinly sliced half a red onion and seasoned it with some grated garlic, vinegar and salt before adding it to the pasta along with a few crushed olives and a generous pour of olive oil, tossing everything together to restore the pasta* to its former plump, glossy glory. 

*They were bowties and it was a choice. Bowties are a good pasta shape. They are a dose of whimsy for the eye, a delight upon the fork. 

I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting much from this, and certainly wasn’t prepared to refer to it as a pasta salad, so color me surprised when I finally opened it on the beach, started to eat it directly from the Tupperware (repurposed from the leftovers, of course) and declared it one of the best pasta salads I’d ever made. (I often speak in hyperbole and I was very hungry, but I also stand by it.) Even better, it was easily the least effort I had put into anything in the kitchen all week. A good reminder that trying to do more with less almost always pays off. 

Pasta e Ceci Salad

Serves 6

While not officially any sort of textbook version of pasta e ceci, the backbone here is still both pasta and chickpeas (ceci). The trick of letting the canned garbanzos swim in the pasta water for a brief time pays dividends, reviving them from their canned self, plumping them slightly and, most importantly, making their surface more receptive to flavor—important once the sauce comes into the picture. Olives and parsley are great here, but in the spirit of this sort of fridge-clean-out, do-less-with-more, accidentally fabulous recipe, I kept them optional.