Muffuletta Pasta #Recipe by @LibbyKlein

Libby Klein I've just returned from a Mystery Writer's Conference in New Orleans where I did as many tours as I could squeeze into two pre-conference days. My favorite tour was a guided food tour of the city by a local chef. Even though I couldn't eat everything on the tour, I still found a new favorite. The Muffuletta. It's pretty close to being an Italian hoagie with olive and vegetable tapenade on sesame seeded bread. Not exactly - but close. 

When I came home to Virginia, I searched Grubhub to see if anyone had Muffulettas. No. Then I searched the grocery stores on Instacart to see if anyone had Muffuletta Salad - the tapenade topping. I was thrilled to find it at Wegmans, and set out to find some way I could turn it into a meal. 

I'm a big fan of a weekly pasta meal. Not the traditional spaghetti and red sauce, although I like that too. I mean a pasta with olive oil and lots of vegetables. One of my favorites I always thought I'd make for the blog one day involves chicken, walnuts, Pecorino Romano, lemon zest, fresh herbs from my garden, and fresh, sauteed asparagus.

Since Muffuletta salad is basically a lot of vegetables and olives in olive oil, why not toss it in pasta? For this version, I added sauteed fresh spinach and another favorite pasta addition - fresh sauteed sugar snap peas, cut in half. Topped with a little fresh parmesan and this is a keeper for our house. Let me know in the comments how you like your pasta. 

Muffuletta Pasta
Yield: 4 large servings

1 box of your favorite pasta. I used high protein for the hubby

1 cup of Muffuletta Salad. More or less to your taste but beware - it's pretty salty

6 cups fresh spinach

2 cups fresh sugar snap peas

Really good quality olive oil

Parmesan cheese

Fresh pepper

 

Boil your pasta according to package directions.

While pasta cooks, sauté your fresh vegetables.

Drain the pasta and toss immediately with the sauteed vegetables. Add about a cup of the muffuletta salad and a healthy sploosh of good olive oil. 

Toss together like you're making a pasta salad because technically you are. 

Top with shredded Parmesan cheese and enjoy.

Layla Virtue, a blue-haired, 30-something recovering alcoholic and former cop is trying to reinvent herself as a musician—between AA meetings, dodging eccentric neighbors at her trailer park, and reconnecting with her mysterious dad—in this ​unforgettable new mystery brimming with hilarity and heart.

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Libby Klein writes ridiculously funny murder mysteries from her Northern Virginia office with a very naughty calico Persian named Miss Eliza Doolittle, and a sweet black Lab named Vader. She can name that tune for 70s and 80s rock in the first few notes, and she's translated her love of classic rock into her Layla Virtue Mysteries. Libby was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that prevents her from eating gluten without exploding. Because bread is one of her love languages, she includes the recipes for gluten free goodies in her Cape May based Poppy McAllister series. Most of her hobbies revolve around travel, and eating, and eating while traveling. She insists she can find her way to any coffee shop anywhere in the world, even while blindfolded. Follow all of her nonsense on her website www.LibbyKleinBooks.com/Newsletter/