Barefoot Bloggers- Pasta w/Sundried Tomatoes

aka the world's shortest, most boring post and no pictures, either :(((

This was a tremendously easy, colorful, and delicious dish. I only wish I had the pictures to show for it. They were wiped out! Grrrr.

Anyway, I enjoyed this dinner quite a bit. I make a variation of it on a pretty regular basis in the summer. The addition of the red wine and olive oil based vinagarette with capers and sundried tomatoes really added some much needed punch to this.

I omitted the black kalamata olives. I love olives, but thought the flavor might be a bit overpowering and would basically cancel out the tomato flavors that were going on.
Also, I chose not to add oil to the cooking water for the pasta. I never do that, so why start now.

Anyway, here's the recipe!

Pasta With Sun-Dried Tomatoes from Barefoot Contessa Family Style, 2002

1/2 lb fusilli pasta
Kosher salt
Olive oil
1 pound ripe tomatoes diced
3/4 cup "good" black olives like kalamata
1 pound fresh mozzarella
6 sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained and chopped

Dressing:

5 sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained
2 tbs red wine vinegar
6 tb extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, diced
1 tsp capers, drained
2 tsp kosher salt
3/4 tsp freshly ground blk pepp
1 cup freshly grated parmesean
1 cup packet basil leaves, julienned

Cook pasta in boiling salted water according to instructions on pkg. Drain well. Plaace the pasta in a bowl and add the tomatoes, olives, mozz, and chopped sun-dried tomatoes.

For the dressing, combine the sun-dried tomatoes, vinegar, olive oil, garlic, capers, salt and pepper in a food processor until almost smooth

Pour the dressing over the pasta, sprinkle with Parmesean cheese and basil, toss well.