City Kitchen: A Quick-Cooking Pasta That Keeps the Heat Outside

It may be September, but the weather is still taking cues from summer. Just the other day, the temperature in my neighborhood had already spiked to 90 by breakfast time, and I was glad I had stocked up at the farmers’ market. I didn’t even want to go outside.

When it’s that hot, I hardly feel like cooking — a rarity for me — or at least I don’t feel like cooking very much. But since I had a load of cherry tomatoes and a basket of sweet peppers, it was the perfect time to make this bright, light and satisfying dish.

So, I made one of the world’s easiest summertime pastas. All the ingredients are raw, except for the pasta, of course. There’s no stovetop cooking involved, except the five minutes it takes cook capellini, angel hair pasta. And the pasta isn’t served hot: It actually tastes best at room temperature. It’s quite common all over Italy to have pasta this way when temperatures soar; though it isn’t ice-cold, it is called pasta fredda.

You hardly need a recipe for this. There are so many variations on pasta fredda; one basically reinvents the dish each time it is made. But I was awfully happy with this one, and so were my guests.

Bell peppers and other sweet peppers — like Corno di Toro and many other varieties of every hue — arrive at the market same time as long-awaited flavorful tomatoes (also multicolored), in late summer, right now. Their pairing here seems preordained.

At the market, look for the most colorful assortment of tomatoes and peppers possible. Cut the sweet peppers into small dice (the size of confetti) and the cherry tomatoes into halves (chopped larger tomatoes would work as well), then toss them with extra-virgin olive oil and red-wine vinegar, a touch of garlic and a pinch of red-pepper flakes. Once dressed, the mixture can sit around for an hour or more, which means you don’t have to rush.

When the spirit moves you, boil water and cook the pasta. Lately, I’m fond of skinny capellini and spaghettini. They taste marvelous when twirled on a fork laden with the marinated tomato-pepper mixture, but nearly any other pasta shape would be fine.

Mound the pasta in a low, wide salad bowl or pasta-serving bowl. Give it a little sprinkle of salt and final drizzle of oil. Serve it plain or with add-ons, like crumbled ricotta salata cheese. I like a handful of crunchy seasoned bread crumbs, and a lot of basil leaves, or maybe a combination of chopped parsley, mint and marjoram.

Consider it a celebration of both the end-of-summer harvest and the seemingly endless sweltering days we’ll be wishing for by and by.

Recipe: Angel Hair Pasta With Peppers and Tomatoes