Pasta salad with green asparagus

Ingredients for 8 servings:

• 500 g pasta
• 1,000 g asparagus, green
• 200g bacon
• 50 g dried tomatoes
• 1 carrot(s)
• 10 radishes
• 250 g feta cheese
• 2 tbsp oil
• 300 ml Hollandaise sauce, light
• 200 g sour cream
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 onion(s)
• 1 lime(s), juice
• salt and pepper
• Paprika powder
• 1 chili pepper(s), as desired

Instructions

Working time approx. 40 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 30 minutes; Total time approx. 1 hour 10 minutes

First, cook the pasta according to the package instructions. However, I added a little more salt to the water (about 3 teaspoons) so that it had a bit more flavor and didn’t absorb all the dressing. I chose corkscrew pasta because it was easy to eat and had plenty of surface area for the sauce. Let the pasta cool down. For the dressing, mix the light hollandaise sauce with the sour cream. To make it a bit more liquid and not waste anything, I rinsed out the hollandaise sauce packet with a little water and added this to the dressing. Finely chop the onion, garlic, and chili (it would have worked without it too) and stirred them in. The lime juice made the dressing even more liquid and added a nice fresh note. Finally, season everything with salt, pepper, and paprika. Set the dressing aside and let it sit. Heat a little oil in a pan and fry the bacon until nice and crispy. While the bacon is sizzling, wash the green asparagus, trim off any woody parts, and cut it into bite-sized pieces about 3-4 cm long. Remove the bacon from the pan and set aside. Fry the green asparagus pieces in the pan with the bacon oil over medium heat with the lid on for about 10 minutes. This can be adjusted to your taste, depending on how crunchy you want the asparagus to be. Meanwhile, dice the carrot, sun-dried tomatoes, radishes, and feta cheese. Place the pasta in a salad bowl and crumble the crispy bacon over the top. Add all the other ingredients to the bowl and pour the dressing over the ingredients. Mix everything well to ensure the dressing is evenly distributed. This salad can also be made ahead and eaten later; we found the salad even more vibrant when it was left to marinate for a bit.