Fresh Corn and Amazing "Pasta" Salad

Thursday June 12

A vegetable dinner, served in three courses. Bicolor corn is coming in - still not local, but we needed a taste of summer. Two cobs each, smeared with chile-lime butter, opened the meal.

Then, we got inspired by the leftover ribbons of zucchini from Sunday's dinner party, and decided to make a salad that would look exactly like a plate of pasta with red sauce.* So Holt got out the trusty Benriner and ran a couple of zucchini and some peeled pickling cukes through its "noodle-izer." (Okay, so they're green; let's say that it's spinach pasta.) He salted them, let them drain, and then patted them dry. Their "red sauce" was just finely-diced red tomatoes, and the "parmesan" was crumbled feta cheese. Garnished with a little basil oil, these "pasta" salads looked and tasted fantastic.

*A Thomas Keller brain-storm.

And the sauce was nice mopped up with a thin slice of herb bread, which Holt had baked and then complete forgot about serving to Jeff and Caroline.

Plus there was sliced honeydew and cantaloupe melon for dessert. In other words, dinner was one amazing elaborate thing bracketed by two completely simple things. And it worked.