Make Greek Orzo Salad... Just substitute Orzo for the lettuce and add the other ingredients and dressing. Its great warm or cold with or without chicken and you can alter it to any dietary restrictions necessary.

Foodshed Foodshed go away, We don't like business's here anyway, come back as a person some other day, this is a food forum not a way, to promote your business here today.

Make a pan sauce with good olive oil, anchovies (throw them in first to melt), blanched & sliced fennel, slivered garlic, pine nuts, golden raisins and s&p. Then toss this with the warm orzo and sprinkle some of the chopped fennel fronds atop.

I'd get the best mushrooms I could find, sautee them together with onion or shallot and garlic in some good olive oil. At the end of the sauteeing, throw in a handful of chopped parsley and some bread crumbs to soak up the extra oil and brown nicely. Toss with the pasta, and you're in good shape.

Its a bit of a cheat since it's a restaurant recipe, but this is a great recipe (I sautee the onion briefly: http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/977/J-Alexanders-Orzo-and-Wild-R94454.shtml

Look at some of the israeli couscous recipes on this site (and there are a lot of very good ones). You could easily swap out the couscous for the orzo in those. At home, I use them interchangeably depending upon what I have in the pantry (adjusting the cooking time as necessary). Good luck.

Unless you are surrounded by buckets of orzo you might also consider substituting israeli couscous---larger grain. But give it the same simply dressed treatment. Olive oil, and an herb at the core. And I do like the pine nuts too!. Of course I sneak anchovies into everything but ice cream. But I also make a "tabbouleh" using lots of parsley and mint and substituting couscous for the bulgar. That was a component of my lunch bag submission.

Betteirene, thanks! It looks great. I am serving roast chicken and tofu (one vegetarian guest, who is married to someone who doesn't like spicy things) & the recent food52 cauliflower winner -- I love this salad, but the cumin will make it a no-go for the spice-phobes. So, I'll make it another time and serve the NYT p, 325 salad this time. Thank you!

allie, I tried to congratulate you on your new title on the announcement page, but I couldn't log in there. So. . .Congratulations! I hope I can help you as much as you've helped me.

I found this salad a little while back when I was looking for some ideas for salads that didn't contain cheese. The lime juice gives it a bright flavor and it has bright colors, too.

http://www.gourmetkoshercooking.com/2010/05/black-bean-and-orzo-salad-2/

What else will you be serving? I think the most difficult part of making an orzo salad is chopping the vegetables small enough so that the orzo doesn't get lost.

Diced carrots and other veggies (red and green bell pepper, red onion, diced cucumbers) with a miso-honey-ginger-sesame oil-rice vinegar dressing.

Page 325 of Amanda's new book: serve with toasted pine nuts, olive oil, salt and fresh ground black pepper and sprinkle fresh basil over it just before serving.