We don't tend to think about pasta salads during the colder winter months, but today on Cooking at Home I'll be using large shells to make a pasta salad with canned tuna, diced English cucumber, hard boiled eggs and dried dill.

Ingredients:
1 lb. Large shell-shaped pasta
4 large eggs
2 cups deseeded diced cucumber
6-ounce can tuna
1 Tbs dried dill
Black pepper
Mayonnaise

Procedure:
When I say large shells, I'm not talking about the jumbo shells used for stuffing. Get a large pot of water going to eventually cook those.

For one pound of pasta, hard boil 4 large eggs in a pot on the stovetop in just enough water to cover. Once that comes to a boil, adjust the heat to a steady simmer and immediately set the timer for 12 minutes.

When the timer goes off, run the eggs under cold water to cool, peel them and rough chop them.

At any point, even while the eggs are cooking, once the pasta water comes to a boil add the one pound box of pasta and stir until it's al dente.

Drain the pasta when it's done and, although you could run cold water over it to cool it down, I like to add it to a large baking tray and toss that with a little olive oil and let it cool down on the tray.

I feel that cooling the pasta this way avoids rinsing any of the good pasta flavor down the drain.

Add the cooled pasta to a large mixing bowl and add 2 cups of deseeded diced cucumber, three 6-ounce cans of tuna, 1 Tbs dried dill, the chopped hard boiled eggs, some black pepper to taste and enough mayonnaise to give it a good pasta salad consistency.