This Mediterranean Pasta Salad is jam packed with chickpeas, olives, capers, tomatoes and red pepper. It's a delicious, nutritious dish that is perfect for the summer months.
Flavours of the Mediterranean
This pasta salad is packed full of the flavours you'd expect when visiting the Mediterranean. Chickpeas, olives, capers, tomatoes and red pepper, plus plenty of parsley, lemon and olive oil. It's full of goodness and tastes great too.
You're probably not surprised by any of those ingredients being added to a pasta salad, except maybe capers. If you've not come across them before then capers are unripe, little flower buds off of a caper bush. They are usually stored in a brine. They have a bright, tart flavour, a bit like floral lemon but also some saltiness and savoury notes from the brine. The flavour is quite strong which is why I love adding them to a salad like this to jazz it up a bit.
I've used olives for similar reasons. the fresh tomatoes, onions and red pepper are delicious but Kalamata olives bring a slightly smokey flavour to the dish.They are quite a deep, rich flavour that balances out the other bright and fresh flavours in the salad.
Of course a Mediterranean pasta salad wouldn't be complete without a lemon, olive oil and parsley dressing. It's delicious!
The recipe
Mediterranean Pasta Salad
Ingredients
- 150 g pasta
- 240 g chickpeas drained weight
- 4 tablespoon capers
- 100 g Kalamata olives drained weight
- 10 cherry tomatoes quartered
- 1 red pepper diced
- 0.5 small red onion finely diced
- 1 lemon juice only
- 6 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 bunch parsley finely chopped
Instructions
- Cook the pasta according to the packets instructions (roughly 10 minutes) then run under cold water to cool.
- Add the remaining ingredients to the cooled pasta and toss.
- Serve cold.
Nutrition
More pasta salads
If you love pasta salad as much as I do you'll love these other vegan pasta salads.
More lunch recipes
For the full range of lunch recipes on the blog, check out the lunch recipe collection.
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