It’s been so lovely – finally! – here in my backyard near Seattle in the afternoons (we’ve had an unusual amount of rain and non-sunny days this summer, sigh).
I’ve hosted a couple of very careful social distancing wine tasting parties with just two or three other friends from the local Woodinville wine industry scene. We sit far apart in the fresh air in my backyard, and we wear masks when we aren’t actively eating or drinking. I have a sanitized bathroom with disposable hand towels they can use downstairs. I glove up and set out wine glasses and glasses of ice water for the guests to help themselves to.
I set up a little bar table with white wines that I’ve quickly opened. I sanitize my hands and make sure I’m the only person touching the bottles, or I leave hand sanitizer on the bar so people can help themselves. I enjoyed decorating my backyard this year with yellow furniture, pillows and accents to celebrate the return of the sunshine!
Some of the delicious local white wines I’ve served lately are Lisa Callan‘s incredible Grenache Blanc, the 2019 “Vivant” Sauvignon Blanc from Adrice Wines that’s hard for me to share with other people, Lisa Warr-King‘s excellent Roussanne, and Sauvignon Blanc from Silver Lake Winery.
After I open up other white wine bottles so we can have small tastes of them, I re-cork them or use rubber wine stoppers so I can send each lady home with a couple of wines she enjoyed tasting at our little party.
I’ve recently served Finn Hill‘s “Fantome Blanc” Pinot Gris, Celaeno Winery‘s “Forever Blonde” Chardonnay, Simpatico Cellars’ Albarino white wine blend, Sightglass Cellars‘ Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, and Long Cellars’ Pinot Gris.
I serve my guests on little disposable paper plates, and use my gloved hands to offer them mini cupcakes and cookies, or to spoon pasta salad onto their plates for them. We’re not trying to have dinner parties, just little snacks besides the usual cheese, nuts and meat charcuterie boards.
The lemon mini cupcakes and Lofthouse sugar cookies were from Metropolitan Market in Sammamish. I found the gumballs (not a great pairing with wine, by the way, but they look pretty!) at HomeGoods in Woodinville.
I found the yellow and white striped pasta (by La Donna Pasta, imported by Allied Int.) at either Tuesday Morning (in the gourmet food section) or at Ross, Marshall’s, Home Goods or TJ Maxx in the gourmet food sections of the store. (I shop a lot, I can’t quite remember!)
There’s a store selling other colored varieties of this striped farfalle online here – I’ve never ordered from them so can’t recommend them one way or the other.
You of course could make this lemon pasta salad with rainbow bow tie farfalle pasta or with regular plain farfalle (or any other type of pasta that’s good for pasta salad, really).
I don’t really have a recipe I can give you for my chilled lemon pasta salad – I just sort of wing it! I cook the pasta a bit al dente (as it will sit overnight in mushy sauce). I toss it with high quality extra virgin olive oil; white balsamic vinegar; a few tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice; and sometimes an extra hit of Meyer Lemon olive oil from local company Leonardo y Roberto’s Gourmet Blends. I season it with Citron sea salt flakes from Falksalt, a pinch or two of regular table salt, and with white pepper instead of black to preserve my pasta salad’s light color scheme.
See what you think of my trick of making the pasta taste even more lemony – I toss a couple of lemon halves into the pasta water while it’s boiling!
Each time I make this pasta salad, it’s a bit different depending on what I have on hand. I really like to play with the yellow-and-white color combination – it makes the salad seem even more refreshing. I’ll toss in orange cherry tomatoes for a pop of contrasting color, and yellow pear tomatoes if I have any. I’ll slice up hearts of palm (Trader Joe’s has affordable cans of them), little balls of mozzarella pearls, and perhaps toss a dusting of feta cheese on the top. Artichoke hearts can be good in here too, unless you are worried about them conflicting with the white wines you’re serving.
I skip the capers, green and black olives that I usually put in my other pasta salads, because they ruin the light flavor profile and mess with my light yellow lemony color scheme!
Chill the pasta salad overnight before you serve it the next day. Right before you serve it, hit it with another splash or three of olive oil and white balsamic vinegar, and stir.
Happy wine tasting!
-Carrie
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