A truly simple and quick first course to prepare, with a dressing that requires no cooking, the cold pasta with pesto, mozzarella, and cherry tomatoes is fresh and delicious. A perfect dish to serve on hot summer days, but also ideal to take to the beach, to the mountains, for picnics, and even to the office. Another simple and genuine dish is the green barley salad. Generally, I prepare it with tomato and mozzarella with fresh basil for flavor, but this time I made it tastier with pesto (which does not claim to be like the Genoese one), and it was really liked a lot. Let’s get to work and prepare the cold pasta with pesto, cherry tomatoes, and mozzarella together.
If you’re looking for other first-course recipes, I recommend trying these flavorful pastas:
- Difficulty: Very Easy
- Cost: Very Affordable
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: 4
- Cooking methods: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients for making cold pasta with pesto, mozzarella, and cherry tomatoes
- 10.5 oz pasta
- 5.3 oz mozzarella
- 3.5 oz cherry tomatoes
- 2.1 oz basil
- 1.1 oz Parmesan cheese
- 0.7 oz pine nuts
- Half lemon zest
- to taste salt
Tools
This post contains affiliate links
- 1 Pot
- 1 Mixing Bowl
- Chopper
Steps to prepare cold pasta with pesto, cherry tomatoes, and mozzarella
Let’s start by boiling the pasta. Throw it into plenty of boiling salted water and cook it until al dente. I don’t like rinsing it with cold water. I prefer to drain it a few minutes early and wait for it to cool after dressing it with a drizzle of oil.
Wash the cherry tomatoes, or datterini will also be fine and cut them in half. Place them in a bowl. Add the mozzarella balls, or a mozzarella cut into cubes.
In a chopper, place the washed and dried basil, Parmesan, pine nuts, oil, a pinch of salt, and the grated zest of an organic lemon. Blend until you get a cream.
Mix the pasta with the pesto, cherry tomatoes, and mozzarella. Serve at the table.
Storage
We can store the cold pasta in the fridge for two or three days. However, I recommend adding the cherry tomatoes at the last moment to keep them juicy and fresh.
