Summer Antipasto Salad

Music Have you ever wondered on a hot summer day what would be a perfect recipe for dinner tonight? Well, I think I have just the answer--an antipasto summer salad. My name is Denita Young. I'm a county Extension agent with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service. And I would like to share with you today how economical and easy this recipe is to put together for your family. First of all, we're going to start with a 16 ounce box of medium pasta noodles. Now, I've already prepared those. Make sure that when you do this, you rinse it under cool water to get all that extra starch off. So we already have that prepared, so we're just going to set put that to the side now and mix our other ingredients. It's very simple, we're going to start with our meats. I have a 1/2 pound of cubed deli ham, 1/2 a pound of cubed hard salami, then I have a 6 ounce package of pepperoni that I have cut in half. OK, now I just want to take a spoon and mix up these meats together. Ok, now that we have our meats mixed up, now we want to add our cheese to that. What I have is a 1/2 pound of cubed mozzarella. Ok, now again, we're just going to mix our cheese into that meat mixture. And you can see how that's coming together and really adding some color. Now we want to add our vegetables. Now the vegetables this particular recipe calls for is 2 cups broccoli florets and we're going to add that in. Then we're going to add 1 chopped red pepper. The red peppers tend to be a little spicier than the green or yellow, so that gives a little extra punch to this recipe. Then, I'm going to add 1/2 a cup of red onion. And I like that not only for the flavor, but I think it adds a different color dimemsion to that dish which makes it very eye-appealing. Then we're going to add a 6 ounce jar of Spanish olives that I have already drained. Now, if your family likes black olives, use black olives. Now the best way to incorporate this now, my bowl's a little full, is to just take two spoons and just gently mix all of this together. Now that we have that, now we need to make a dressing so that we'll tie all of this together. We're going to start with 3/4 cup of olive oil. Now I use the medium olive oil because I don't want that really really strong flavor. And I'm going to add 1/2 cup of red wine vinegar. And about 4 tablespoons of lemon juice. Then there are only 3 dry intredients we're going to add. First, is 2 teaspoons of Italian dressing. I'm going to put that in, going to add 2 teaspoons of ground black pepper, and then 1/2 teaspoon of salt. I'm just going to take my wisk and mix all of that together. So, we're going to set that to the side and then we're going to bring our pasta back in. OK, now that we have that here, what we're gong to do is we're just going to pour our dressing over the pasta and take the spoons and incorporate the dressing over our pasta. Now we're gong to take our meat and vegetable and cheese mixture and once again, take our 2 spoons and we're just going to toss our pasta in with that. OK, now that we have this mixed together really well, what we're going to do is we're going to plate that on a really pretty bed of lettuce, especially if you wanted to serve this for maybe like a shower or a luncheon. Now again, you can do all types of substitutions with this based on what your family likes. Now, don't forget to go and visit us at Texas A&M Agrilife Extension Service for more Dinner Tonight ideas, and also make sure you go and like us on Facebook.