I'm not really a big fan of the "ice cold soft spirals with too much vinegar", or the "elbows drowning is some sort of mayanaise" style pasta salads, but like everything else that is generated from a kitchen, quality ingredients, lots of love, and a little experimentation leads to wonderful culinary accomplishments.
So what is a pasta salad? According to dictonary.com: "a salad having any of various pastas as the base". Ok so what is salad?
Middle English salade, from Old French, possibly from Old Provençal salada, from Vulgar Latin *salta, from feminine past participle of *salre-to salt.
Websters describes SALAD as:
1. a. A dish of raw leafy green vegetables, often tossed with pieces of other raw or cooked vegetables, fruit, cheese, or other ingredients and served with a dressing.
1. b. The course of a meal consisting of this dish.
2. A cold dish of chopped vegetables, fruit, meat, fish, eggs, or other food, usually prepared with a dressing, such as mayonnaise.
3. A green vegetable or herb used in salad, especially lettuce.
4. A varied mixture: “The Declaration of Independence was... a salad of illusions” (George Santayana).
How mixing pasta and veggies (or sometimes meats and especially cheese) could be bad, I don't know. Many years ago I was playing around and wound up with a chicken and pasta salad with rosemary, peppers and sundried tomatoes that was out of this world. I've used variations of green goddess dressings and mixed with pasta, cherry tomatoes and a bit of fresh basil to make a wonderful creamy pasta salad. And when one of my culinary gods describes an artichoke pasta salad, I want to start boiling water. So to say that pasta salads are "bad" just doesn't jive for me.
So tangentwomen, if you need some pasta "side dishes" just let me know. I say pasta salads, live on!
1 comment:
Is that TWO blogs I've read on pasta salad???? I mean, I make a pretty yummy version, but I didn't think I'd ever need to read 2 blogs on it! :)
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