Ginger Pasta Salad

You know how they say your tastebuds change every seven years?  Well, I don't know about that, but I'm sure everyone has had the experience of liking certain foods they didn't used to before.  Ginger is one of those foods for me.  As a child, I hated ginger, though that's not saying much since I have yet to meet a child who likes it.  But now that I'm older (and wiser?), I have grown to love this Asian spice.  Lately, I've been particularly inspired to experiment with it in the kitchen, so here's the first of a series of ginger recipes I've been working with in recent weeks.

R. and I were visiting his mom for the fourth of July and we had some of her homemade ginger pasta salad - no exaggerations here, but it was the first pasta salad I've ever liked.  It was so good that after we got home, I wanted to try making it myself.  While I could have just asked mom-in-law for her recipe, I wanted to see if I could recreate her dish on my own, and this is what I came up with.

Ginger Pasta Salad

Ingredients:

Celery, 2 stalks, diced
Cherry tomatoes, about 24, halved
Edamame, 5 oz
Red onion, 1/2, small diced
Cilantro, 1 cup chopped
Baby carrots, 1/2 cup sliced
Red pepper, 1/2, diced
Red wine vinegar, 1/2 cup
Whole wheat rotini, 1 (1 lb) package
*Ginger, 3 tbsp freshly grated
Pine nuts, 1/3 cup, toasted

Directions:

1. Cook rotini according to package directions.  Drain.
2. In a large bowl, mix the first seven ingredients together (from celery to red pepper).
3. In another large bowl, toss together the cooked rotini, grated ginger, and red wine vinegar.
4. Pour the pasta into the mixed veggies.  Toss well.  Top with toasted pine nuts.

*Disclaimer:  I am a ginger fiend and like to be able to taste it in my dish, so I am rather generous when it comes to the amount of ginger to use.  It may or may not work for everybody.