Creamy Latin Pasta Salad

One of my fave cookbooks to look through has been Ingrid Hoffman's "Simply Delicioso" - I've used it quite a bit this past summer. This pasta salad sounded so good, and so simple, I had to hunt down evaporated milk. Not an easy feat! Swedish stores now sell condensed milk, but that is sweetened and not what you need for this. I finally got lucky at an Asian supermarket, and scored a can of evaporated milk. (It's basically milk with half the water removed, so it's a much thicker milk.) Next time though.. I'll skip it. It wasn't all that great, and I think the dressing would be wonderful using crème frâiche instead - so feel free to try that.

The original recipe had celery, which I hate, red onions which I didn't eat this summer because of nursing, and ham which I just didn't want this time.

Creamy Latin Pasta Salad
(printable recipe)

400 g pasta shapes - I used fusili or rotelli
125 ml evaporated milk
50 ml olive oil
150 g feta cheese, crumbled
1 big bunch of fresh coriander, chopped
2 tbsp fresh lime juice
salt, pepper
1 orange bellpepper, finely diced
1 red bellpepper, finely diced
200 ml green peas (thawed if frozen)
150 ml green olives, de-stoned

Boil the pasta in plenty of salted water, and drain.

Mix the evaporated milk with feta cheese, olive oil, coriander and lime in a food processor and run until smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

Mix the pasta with bellpeppers, peas and olives. Add the dressing and toss well.

Leave it for at least an hour before serving, so the flavors get a chance to marry.

Recipe in Swedish:
Krämig pastasallad från Latinamerika