"Greek" Pasta Salad

Last week, Joef graduated from the Yale School of Management. I'm wildly proud of him, and feel very lucky to have been able to spend two years with such a fascinating and fantastic group of people. Joef's parents, sister, and our youngest nephew came into town to celebrate with us, and we knew where we wanted to take them: The Place in Guilford. I've actually only been there once, last summer, and I've been wanting to take Joef since then. It's an all-outdoor restaurant with a giant firepit in the middle of bunches of tables with tree stumps for chairs. They serve grilled clams, lobster, salmon, chicken, shrimp, corn-on-the-cob, and delicious desserts. Shattered clam shells serve as flooring, and it's just great.

It's also a BYO type of place, from beverages to sides to, well, pretty much whatever you want. I decided to put together a quick pasta salad, something I'd seen Rachel Ray throw together on TV a few years back. It's simple and delicious, and great as leftovers the next day. It complemented our grilled salmon in aluminum foil and clams with butter just right. It's an "eyeball it" type of recipe, so here's approximately what you need:

3/4-1lb orzo pasta, cooked
1 package grape/cherry tomatoes
1 cucumber, diced
1/2 red onion, diced
Kalamata olives, however many you want
Feta cheese sprinkles, sprinkled generously
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

You guessed it: just prep the ingredients and mix them all together, using a 2:1 or ratio on the olive oil: vinegar. Picnic time!

Infusions: Fire Oil

Let the Naga Saga continue! Har!

Joef's next creation in this series was Naga-Jolokia-infused oils. We made three types: olive oil, sesame, and peanut. We used slightly different proportions in each one - olive oil was mildest, peanut the hottest. In general, we used two ghost peppers for two cups of oil, and then added a few bird peppers for some more flavor. 

The oils turned out great, and to be honest, not as hot as we expected. For example, I used the infused olive oil to make a white clam sauce (and added shrimp - SO good!), a fairly oil-intensive dish, and it wasn't spicy at all. However, if you use it as a dipping sauce, there's more heat. So, next time we do this, we're going to add more peppers per cup of oil, and we're also going to leave the peppers in the oil for a couple of days before removing them - as we learned from the vodka, it takes a little time for the heat to seep out.

 So, for two cups of oil:

2 ghost peppers, halved

4 or so bird peppers, halved

Heat the oil in a wok. When the oil is hot, drop in the peppers. Let them cook for about 10 minutes, then remove the oil from the heat. Let the oil cool, then pour into glass containers (containers should be boiled before use).

The peppers are very, very, very hot - so take the proper precautions. We probably overdid it a little with the face masks, but the latex gloves were definitely a good plan. And don't touch your face!

Looking forward to using these oils in stir fries and more!