Everday Food Corn and Zucchini Orzo Salad

Pasta is a stable in my household. I never have to worry about having too many leftovers that won't get eaten if a dish includes any type of pasta, someone in my house will eat it. My love of pasta goes back to my childhood. Growing up my family didn't have a lot of money, so pasta was a common meal. Luckily my mother was a very good cook and almost every meal she made was delicious. I especially loved pasta and she invented a recipe for Asian noodles, that to this day is one of the best dishes I have ever tasted. My two boys have inherited my love of all things pasta and literally cheer when they realize a pasta dish is for dinner. Recently, the September issue of Everyday Food magazine had a recipe for Corn and Zucchini Orzo Salad, which looked delicious and a great way to use pasta as a side dish.

This recipe has 11 ingredients. I makes 6 servings and takes a total of 35 minutes, all of which is active cooking time. I had no problems finding any of the ingredients at my local grocery store. Make sure to add lots of salt to the pasta water when cooking the orzo or the dish will be very under-salted. Even with the pasta water being adequately salted, I still had to add a decent amount of salt to bring out the full flavor of the zucchini and fresh corn. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

If your trying to feed a crowd this is a great recipe. The recipe states that this makes 6 servings, but they would be 6 very large servings. I would say that this salad could easily serve 12 or more people. This dish was light and delicious the day it was made, but was even better tasting after it had sat in the fridge overnight and soaked up all the flavors from the dressing. I didn't feel that the taste of the jalapeno was very apparent. I would suggest either adding another seeded jalapeno, or if you enjoy spicy dishes, keeping the seeds in for extra flavor. Overall, a light vegetable and pasta salad, that makes enough leftovers for another meal. 

For the recipe go to Corn and Zucchini Orzo Salad.