Cold Noodles with Salsa Verde and White Beans

Cold spaghetti is like cold pizza: It can be even better than its hot counterpart, depending on what else you add to it. For cold pizza, that means ranch. For cold spaghetti, that means treating the noodles like beans, grains, or other starchy ingredients that are delightful eaten cold. Here, we’re tossing cold spaghetti with a mess of herbs held together by olive oil and perked up with lemon and garlic.

That sauce is better known as salsa verde, an endlessly riffable Italian sauce (not to be confused with Mexican salsa verde) whose core components include chopped soft-stem herbs (parsley, basil, cilantro — as opposed to thyme and rosemary), olive oil, garlic, an acid (like lemon or red wine vinegar), and sometimes something briny, like capers or anchovies, and spicy, like red pepper flakes or jalapeño.

Here, the zippy, parsley-based sauce luxuriously coats the cold noodles, thanks to all the olive oil. Add a can of white beans for a meal-worthy salad, or add canned tuna or hard-boiled eggs instead. Feel free to swap out the herb, or use leftover spaghetti (or another pasta shape) instead of a fresh batch. Cold pasta, like cold pizza, bends to your needs.