How to turn leftover cooked orzo into a delicious late-summer salad – recipe

Tom Hunt's ‘anti-recipe’ orzo salad. Photograph: Tom Hunt/The Guardian

I rarely, if ever, buy orzo, the rice-shaped pasta, but I was intrigued by barbecue chef Melissa Thompson’s poll on her Instagram stories asking: “Do you have a half-finished bag of orzo sitting in your cupboard?” She had more than 600 responses, almost 90% of which said yes. Thompson turned hers into a salad with pepper, spring onion, tomatoes and cucumber. Inspired, I rushed out to buy a bag (yes, I see the irony, too) and made a salad using leftovers. And, of course, ended up with half a bag of orzo in my cupboard.

Orzo salad: an anti-recipe