The Move This Summer is Pasta Salad
Plus 4th of July tasting notes, chip tips, and a family recipe divulged.
Hope everybody had a good 4th of July celebrating whatever-the-fuck it is we celebrate on the 4th of July.
Personally, boycotting American holidays isn’t for me. I don’t give a shit what Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Labor Day is about, I just want to see my niece and nephew. I want to cook with my Mom, cut up with friends, and sit down at a big table or meander around a backyard with people I love. If some fading gratitude for America is what brings us together, then so be it.
Let’s Talk About Chips Right Quick
My contributions to this year’s friends-4th extravaganza were caramelized onions with port wine and butter, toum, hot mustard Doritos, and two pasta salads. I should have brought a bocce set, too, but I forgot.
If you don’t know, hot mustard Doritos are an absolute stunner. I wrote about them for The Takeout, and I highly recommend them as a go-to potluck chip for the rest of the Summer.
When you’re bringing chips to a party, mix it up.
Cool Ranch Doritos are fine, but that’s just it: They’re fine. They require almost no thought, and no thought doesn’t cut it anymore. You need to wow people even when you aren’t cooking. Personally, I rank Tapatío, Salsa Verde, Spicy Sweet Chili, and Hot Mustard as flavors that surpass Cool Ranch. Stop with the same ol’ bag of Lay’s or Ruffles. Pick up some Thai chips. Order something peculiar and regional online. Step up your chip game. You owe it to the party.
You’re probably wondering why I’m so opinionated about chips. Well, it’s because I’m from Chip Country, partner.
Why Did I Bring Toum?
Growing up, toum (aka garlic mayonnaise sans egg yolk), was at every family event in the Summer. We had hamburgers and hot dogs, sure, but the top act was always charcoal grilled lamb on the rod. Lamb is a tradition that Syrian immigrants brought to New Castle, Pennsylvania, which also became adopted by Greeks and Italians in my burnt out, rust-belt hometown.
Every Summer, butchers take whole legs of lamb and cube them up for families back home. We Palumbos marinate ours overnight in Ziploc bags full of mint, lemon, olive oil, and crushed garlic. Day of, we stab these lamb chunks through metal rods, grill them over hot coals, and then my Uncle uses his hairy arm to slide off the cooked meat using a piece of Syrian bread like an oven mitt. A common barbecue plate growing up included lamb, hot pepper salad with raw onion and fresh oregano, Syrian bread, Southern potato salad, bean salad, pasta salad, and yes, toum. I wouldn’t trade that plate of food for anything I’ve eaten in the last 30 years. It carries too much history, too many generations of familial love.
So, I made toum here in L.A., and I told people to throw it on burgers, but then my good pal Karl Hess started dipping them in the hot mustard Doritos, and a star was born. The tangy, mustardy Doritos and the pungent toum were a winning combo. Normalize toum as a chip dip this Summer, ya heard?
Let’s Talk About Pasta Salad
The thing I was most excited to contribute to the 4th was pasta salad. Pasta salad is a winner for numerous reasons. It’s filling, cheap to make, and improving upon the average person’s idea of it is easy as hell. Pasta salad is too often regulated to simple, uninspired, and often unseasoned flavors. Nobody has expectations for it. Not until I’m done with them.
Growing up, pasta salad wasn’t only a holiday meal, it was eaten during most non-eventful weekdays in the Summer. Once made, a big metal pot full of pasta salad would usually sit in our fridge for the better part of a week, taking up an entire shelf all to itself.
In the dog days of Summer, my Mom, brother, and I would all eat big bowls of tangy, cheesy, meat-filled pasta salad with an big glass of iced tea for lunch, dinner, or sometimes even for breakfast. Cold noodles in the Summer aren’t anything strange (see: naengmyeon), but I can’t help but feel there weren’t many families out there eating pasta salad around the clock like we did, with the windows open and the fans blowing at 11AM on a hot Summer day.
Mom’s pasta salad was deli-style. That is, it’s an unsustainable pasta salad filled with porky cured meats and semi-soft deli cheeses. Sprinkled with sliced Victoria olives from a can, mild and tangy sliced banana peppers from a jar, and stained orange with McCormick Salad Supreme seasoning, there was never a time this pasta salad didn’t hit. Every time I’ve introduced it to friends out here, they’ve loved it. In a see of healthy options and a city that severely lacks mid-Atlantic Italian food (think chicken Francaise and stuffed banana peppers), this style of pasta salad is a breath of fresh air.
Salad Supreme is a wonderful spice blend you can buy at most grocery stores. It’s got over 20 ingredients, including paprika, Romano cheese, poppy seed, celery seed, garlic, and black pepper. It’s got a strong umami flavor, and paints the pasta salad with a deep orange hue. Salad Supreme absolutely rocks, and it’s the secret ingredient that allows me to dunk on your Aunt at a potluck (I am only there to destroy your Aunt).
And, because I live in L.A. and I’m surrounded by vegetarian minded folks, I used the toum to make a cold orecchiette and chopped broccolini salad. If you’re vegan, toum is a phenomenal replacement for mayonnaise. I highly recommend this simple and straightforward Serious Eats recipe (I will also tell you: Make sure you degerm the garlic. It matters). It’s garlicky and creamy and one of the more indulgent vegan condiments that exists.
Although I don’t have a detailed recipe for the toum pasta salad, I will tell you that you a generous coating of the garlic sauce, some vinegar, black pepper, salt and squeezed lemon goes a long way. I blanched the broccolini, shocked it in an ice bath (preserves that wonderful dark green color), then chopped it up along with a red bell pepper for sweetness and color. It was simple, and the perfect anecdote to the reckless, soppressata filled pasta salad which sat next to it on the picnic table.
This Summer, pasta salad deserves more respect. Not just as a potluck contribution for a Holiday, but as a delicious, nutritious cold meal to have in your fridge at all times. Cold noodles for hot weather is the move.
Unsustainable Pasta Salad
1 lb. tri-color rotini
1 entire (2.62-oz.) container of Salad Supreme
1 lb. colby jack cheese, cubed
½ lb. hard salami, cubed
½ lb. soppressata, cubed
½ lb. pepperoni, cubed
1 (6-oz.) jar of black olives, sliced in half
1 (16-oz.) jar of Italian dressing
1 jar of mild, sliced banana pepper rings
oil + vinegar, to balance the flavors
salt + pepper, to taste
Cook the pasta as instructed by the package, drain, then rinse under cold water. In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients and stir thoroughly. This salad is best when it marinates, so cover it tightly and let it sit in the fridge overnight. The spices and dressing will permeate every morsel of the pasta salad.
Obviously this dish can be improved by making some of the components from scratch, such as the dressing, but store-bought Italian dressing is certainly quick and easy. It tasted a bit too sweet out of the bottle, though, so I balanced out this pasta salad with two tablespoons of red wine vinegar and another 1/4 cup of oil. Salad Supreme can also be made at home by combining dry spices to your liking. I made one with poppy seed, celery seed, paprika, red pepper flakes, salt, black pepper, garlic powder, and Romano cheese. It was delicious. Salad Supreme doesn’t have to be a product, it can be an idea, mannnnn.
Note: You may omit the bottled Italian dressing entirely. Use some vinegar and oil to coat the pasta. The Italian dressing is a total Mom move. This recipe is true to Mom.
Note: Use more meat and cheese if you like. I got some fontina cheese and added it to this recipe for the 4th. It was dope.
Note: Last time I made this, I put too much salt. To fix that, I boiled a few more ounces of pasta, then seamlessly mixed it into prepared pasta salad. Problem solved.
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Trader Joe's Ghost Pepper chips with toum. Ok bye.