Lucky dip part 3 - Pasta salad
" Just don’t add mayo."
The Guardian
This is the page in Jamie's Happy Days book which I opened for my lucky dip. In typical Jame fashion he calls it The Best Pasta Salad. The recipe is on his website. Just click on the highlighted name above. It's really simple, just tomatoes and olives with a dash of cucumber. Whatever else you might say about him he's certainly not modest, - witness the title of this dish - though somehow it doesn't come over as boasting. Anyway it set me to thinking about pasta salads.
This one features small shell-shaped pasta, and when I started checking out pasta salads on the net, it was surprising how many of the cooks and chefs maintained that small shaped pasta is best. Yotam Ottolenghi thought that this was because:
"Many people assume that larger noodles ought to be eaten warm, but they’ve been put off, I think, by all the times they’ve cooked too much spaghetti, say, and left it in the pan, abandoned and cold, where it just sticks together in an unsightly clump. Avoid that by draining the pasta properly, refreshing any excess under cold water, then leaving it to dry before dressing it. You can then enjoy your leftovers at room temperature and at your leisure." Yotam Ottolenghi
Mind you I think the Guardian's solution is rather simpler and better:
"Clumping is a classic pasta pitfall. Avoid it by draining it well, drizzling with a little olive oil then giving it all a good shake together and leaving to cool on a plate." The Guardian
The majority that I found did indeed pasta shapes like farfalle, shells, penne and the spirals, although there were a few with ravioli and tortellini.
Me - when I'm making a pasta salad I usually cook the pasta and then add all the ingredients that I have previously prepared, toss to combine and pour over the dressing, finishing off with some chopped herbs. You should add the dressing to the warm pasta by the way. We often have pasta salad in the summer because it's one of David's favourite things. We usually buy a cooked chicken from the supermarket, so that it's eventually a warm salad - pasta and chicken are both warm. The other ingredients depend on what is to hand, though there is usually some kind of salami or ham in there.
This is a pasta salad I made in France once - it doesn't have chicken because it was a very scratch meal. There were no more chickens left in the cooked chicken shop, so we had to make do with veggies and salami. What we had in the fridge. Looks like there was rather too much pasta to the other stuff, but anyway it went down well.
Really you can do just about anything with a pasta salad. The prime things to remember are not to use clumped pasta - see the two suggestions above, not to add the herbs until right at the end, and to use a strong, tangy kind of dressing. No mayo. Well that's maybe a matter of taste I guess. Otherwise let your imagination run wild.
You can go Asian too. Nigel Slater has A Noodle Salad with Sprouted Beans and Walnuts if you're feeling Asian. Here are a couple of recipes I found from Donna Hay - Tomato and Crispy Parsley Pasta Salad, and Watercress and Walnut Pesto Pasta Salad. She has lots more - as do most of your favourite cooks.
And for the slightly weird here is a Yotam Ottolenghi salad - Black Spaghetti with Pickled Rhubarb, Ginger and Peanuts.
Pickling the rhubarb is part of the recipe.
Great for the lunchbox they all say and great for using up leftovers in the fridge. So yes, a great basic dish with which to have fun. And you can make big quantities very easily for that family barbecue. The kids too. They would love having a go at this.
It's nice, but I think I prefer a potato salad.
