For this simple but effective Caprese salad-style dish, I substituted Ancient Harvest Quinoa Garden Pagoda noodles. We have a good-sized gluten-free crowd that visits our store, so I knew they would be appreciative. Plus, these noodles stay al dente – no worry of sogginess here. These ancient supergrains are organic and fun to cook with. Their little shells or rotelle would have worked, as well. If you are curious, check out their website at http://ancientharvest.com/
The prep for this recipe was meditative and not quite as intense as the SPRING PEA SOUP. Can I just say though, that peeling and deseeding beefsteak tomatoes is a messy business? Another substitution that I made was grape tomatoes in place of cherry. I took a fellow chef's advice to quickly boil the small tomatoes so that the skins of these would slide right off. He suggested 30 seconds, which wasn't quite enough time. At that point, I said to myself, they look pretty the way they are. To heck with peeling these little guys! And so they sat on top, nice and pretty. They actually took on an extra pleasantly tart flavor with the boiling.
The extra virgin olive oil infused with red pepper flakes, fresh basil, and garlic was like aromatherapy sitting on my stove top. Co-workers stopped by to breathe in the heaven. The sauce turned out subtle and chunky – nicely understated.
The other great thing about this pasta, is that you can easily serve it warm, room temp, or chilled. It was a particularly muggy summer day in Wisconsin when I chose to whip this up, so slightly chilled it was. The arugula called for was also the perfect peppery touch. Hats off to Andrew Carmellini for this one. Tune in next week for another chapter of Daniel Boulud’s, "Cafe Boulud Cookbook."