What is most disconcerting about pasta salad is that it is appealing in theory: a fun and carefree “throw it all in” dish, a commendable use of leftovers. Here is Sunday’s fusilli, here are Saturday’s vegetables, all we need do now is prepare a jazzy vinaigrette and chuck on Parmesan.
Media types on the East Coast of the United States have declared 2023 “pasta salad summer”. It is a sweeping generalisation. On TikTok, though, the statement holds fast, at least over there in the land of corn syrup and questionable farming. Vox magazine writes that prominent food influencers have been stirring up infatuation with various preparations. It’s “nostalgia mixed with aesthetics,” apparently, “a classic summer dish that can be remade into a colourful wonder.”
Meanwhile, author Alison Roman, in London for a book launch not so long ago — the chocolate pudding was sublime, by the way — recently folded one of her illustrious recipes into the mix. Then came a pasta salad segment on Good Morning America, before the real clincher: a food tweet from the New York Times. That settles it: pasta salad is an American missile about to hit a British picnic.
But look: pasta salad is admirable by design but ailing in practice. Oh, you might see combinations such as farfalle with mozzarella balls, thin, fatty notes of bacon, all manner of herbaceous leaves and bright red tomatoes. But knock that up, sit down, and witness the basil sagging, the cold tomatoes roaming wetly against hardening pasta (which, by the way, is longing, just longing for a proper sauce) and the mayonnaise, no doubt involved in some capacity, swirling about the place while pondering its existence.
Consider pasta salad’s postulation. The fact is, I’m not even sure most constitute the term “salad” at all. Those that look like they’re worth eating are merely pasta dishes served cold. The concept is defunct. And so I vehemently reject the very notion of “pasta salad”. Why do we want cold pasta anyway? Pasta is supposed to be hot or warm, and just because we’re now in the mighty throes of summertime doesn’t mean we need to eat exclusively refrigerated foods. Are we but penguins?
We in Britain might be excellent at picnics. Look at our sausage rolls. But pasta salad is a saggy state of affairs
In any case, over here, pasta salad is less a rhythm or sultry interlude, it is plastic containers filled with cheap olives and penne. I’ve been dismissive of American gastronomy enough. If I don’t enjoy it, I at least appreciate their infallible pride.
Because in the UK, in part thanks to M&S, the non-thinker’s answer to Waitrose, our pasta salad culture is found utterly wanting. Slippery, slippery pasta (when overcooked) or hard lumps of wheat (when underdone), and either way soggy or dry against pieces of red onion (probably) and a failing lubricant. Sun-dried tomatoes had their day in the sun much too long ago; cucumbers never survive longer than half an hour chopped and flung; olive oil and balsamic vinegar only ever seem harsh when splattered against nodules of sorry looking cheese.
We in Britain may be excellent at picnics. Look at our sausage rolls, pay tribute to the endearing way we welcomed hummus into our lives all those years ago. And we’re tremendous at buffets too, another platform for the dish in question. But any which way, pasta salad is a saggy state of affairs, an unforgiving medley of overzealous tang and austerity. If you want a salad, have a salad. If you want pasta, cook.
