pasta salad with parmesan & roasted pepper dressing

This was the first salad I tried to make from the cookbook my mother in law sent us recently. The cookbook has a hundred different kinds of salads in it so I have a long way to go. There are so many ideas not just for the salads but for the dressings as well. I made this based on the available ingredients I had. An optional ingredient was tuna. I used canned tuna in olive oil which I served in a separate bowl. I also replaced the fussili pasta suggested in the recipe with macaroni. The other vegetables I tossed in were quartered tomatoes, chopped red onion, thinly sliced red bell pepper, torn romaine lettuce, fresh parsley and sliced cucumbers. I topped it with some shaved parmesan cheese.

The dressing (shown above) was something new that I also tried for the first time. The flavor combination of the parmesan cheese and roasted bell peppers came together well and worked great with the salad. I used two whole pieces of roasted bell peppers in a jar and roughly chopped them before blending in with the mayonnaise and grated parmesan cheese. Add a little apple cider vinegar, half and half or milk for a thinner consistency then season with salt and pepper.