Pasta Salad

I love salads. But people are frequently surprised when I say that. I suppose it's because the salads they think of are boring mesclun greens dressed in some generic vinaigrette. But who says salads have to be boring? Or that eating clean and healthy has to be mutually exclusive to delicious? Not tooting my own horn here, but my salads have converted a few veggie-hating friends. Like this pasta salad, which I recently whipped up when Pet came over. As she said, if her parents had made her salads like this, she wouldn't hate greens so much.

Ingredients (feeds 4):
1 cup uncooked pasta, boiled in salted water till 1 minute before al dente, and cooled by an ice bath, and drained
5 cups arugula leaves
2 cups fresh basil leaves
2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
2 eggs, hard-boiled and sliced
3 tbsp pitted and sliced kalamata olives
1 ball burrata, cut into small chunks
3 tbsp pesto
4 tbsp olive oil
salt to season

Directions:
1) Marinade cherry tomatoes with pesto and olive oil, with salt to season. Leave aside for 5 minutes.

2) Assemble salad any way you like. I layered the bottom with a mix of pasta, arugula, and basil, drizzled a little pesto-olive oil dressing on top, then topped that with cherry tomatoes, olives, eggs.

3) Finish with a layer of burrata and you're ready to go!