Hawaiian Pasta Salad

 

This recipe lends itself well to variation and tweaking, as it is very versatile. When we made this, we did it a bit differently - most notably, we used large shell pasta rather than small, and cut the indgredients into cubes rather than julienne strips. There was no real reason for this other than convenience. Finally, since we live in a one-horse town (), we unfortunately had to skip the cashews, since they were expensive here.

 

Our first step was to grill the ham for a few minutes on each side on the gas grill:

 

 

Meanwhile, we got some pasta boiling:

 

 

Once it was done, we drained it well, rinsing with cold water.

 

Here we have an orange and a grapfruit, peeled, sectioned and chopped:

 

 

And a tomato, rather than a red pepper:

 

 

After cutting the ham into cubes:

 

 

And the carrots into coins:

 

 

We brought together the ingredients for the "vinaigrette," including orange juice, oil, citrus zest and spices:

 

 

then we brought everything together, adding the peas, pineapple and the cooked pasta:

 

 

As I said before, this colorful salad looked great, and was a festive treat for the eyes, belying the cool, gray day outside:

 

 

We served this with Hawaiian grilled pork chops:

 

 

And really enjoyed it!

 

The fresh citrus tastes were perfect for the ham and the pineapple in the saald, and the vegetables and pasta made this a nice, light salad side dish for the savory pork chops.

 

 

This is another one of those easy-to-make recipes that will always deliver and never disappoint!