Cold pasta salad with chicken

Steps

1. 1

   Cook the pasta a minute past al dente, on purpose

   Whole-grain pasta, one minute longer than the box says. Pasta firms up as it chills, so anything perfectly al dente hot is unpleasantly hard cold. This is the opposite of the rule for a hot dish.

   10:00
2. 2

   Rinse it cold, which you would never normally do

   Drain and rinse under cold water until it stops steaming. Rinsing washes off surface starch, and here that is what you want: it stops the whole bowl gluing into one lump in the fridge.

3. 3

   Broccoli into the same water, briefly

   Two cups of broccoli florets into the pasta water for 90 seconds before you drain it, then into the cold rinse with everything else. Same pot, no extra pan, and the broccoli stays bright green rather than grey.

   1:30
4. 4

   Dress it while it is cold, then let it sit

   About 12 oz of cooked sliced chicken, 2 tbsp olive oil, the juice of a lemon, salt. Toss and leave it in the fridge an hour before portioning. Cold pasta absorbs dressing slowly, so seasoning it straight away tastes flat.

5. 5

   Portion into four, dress again on day three

   Four containers. By the third day it will have drunk most of the oil and lemon, so a fresh squeeze at the table brings it back.