The totally improvised pasta bean salad w pickle brine sauce that turned out amazing!

I made this salad because I needed to bring something to the Freedom Clothing Collective potluck this passed weekend. I had just gotten home from a night shift and photo session so I didn’t have time to go shopping before the afternoon event. I was thinking about what to make. I had black beans that had been soaking for about a day in the fridge and I wanted to use them. I also had elbow macaroni in the cupboard. I decided I would make a pasta bean salad.

I cooked equal amounts of pasta to the amount of beans I had. I also had an avocado so I added that. I would have added more but I only had one! I added chopped green pimento olives because I was already eating those as I was cooking and they tasted SO GOOD. I chopped the olives so that the olive looked like a life saver with the pepper in the middle. I added pumpkin seeds because I had them but the salad would have been just fine without them, next time I’ll make it without pumpkin seeds. I would have added peppers but I didn’t have any at home.

For the sauce I knew I would use mayonnaise but I needed something with a kick to go with it. I had a pickle jar with just the brine left waiting in the fridge; I had been saving it because a friend of mine told me that pickle brine is her secret in pasta sauce. She learned this from her mother who is from the former Yugoslavia (not sure which part). I thought it would work for my pasta bean salad just as well. So I mixed about a quarter of a cup of pickle brine with about a quarter cup of mayonnaise. I remembered I had goat milk soft feta so I added about half a cup of that to the sauce. So that was the sauce!

I mixed it all together, tried some! And rushed over to the potluck! I think the trick was the pickle brine!

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So these are the INGREDIENTS:

1) Beans (I used black beans because those were what I had, I noticed they darkened the pasta so I would recommend using any kind of bean other than black beans, pick your favourite! next time I’m going to use chickpeas as well!)
2) Elbow macaroni

3) Avocado

4) Peppers, chopped well

SAUCE

1) Pickle Brine

2) Mayonnaise

3) Soft Goat Milk Feta Cheese

The dish took about an hour and a half to make including the time for the beans and macaroni to cook. Remember I used dry beans, not the kind from a can and had them soaked and ready to be boiled.This dish is vegetarian but not vegan. All my ingredients were Certified Organic and bought from Kensington Market (except the mayo).

I can’t give you any more measurements because this salad was made on the fly and according to many taste tests along the way! I really didn’t measure anything except for if it was tasty!

Also, I might add chopped jar fermented dill pickles next time. I recommend Tymeks from Roncesvalles’s Benna’s Bakery. They are my favourite!