I often think of that scene when I take a bite of a cold pasta salad, especially on hot summer days that make the creamy dish seem, by turns, cooling and comforting.
I was reminded of that movie scene again when the topic of the thrifty and once-ubiquitous tuna pasta salad came up during a Food photo shoot at The Post. Several of my colleagues began telling sepia-hued tales of eating big bowls of the stuff every summer on screened porches with ceiling fans overhead or while on family picnics, swatting mosquitoes and sharing stories.
Get the recipe: Tuna Pasta Salad
There was much talk about what went into such a salad and what didn’t. Green peas were a sticking point. One colleague told of the kids using their forks to flick the offending peas to the floor and then nudging them through the spaces between the floorboards on the family’s porch.
I didn’t grow up eating these tuna salads, but those stories had me wishing I had, and they made me determined to fix myself a big bowl before summer took its final bow.
Whether you call them pasta salads, noodle salads or macaroni salads, the concoctions traditionally have a few things in common. They are served cold, most often include a mixture of easy-to-find, inexpensive ingredients and are brought together by a creamy dressing.
For this one, made with canned tuna, I drew on inspiration from my colleagues’ favorite recipes. I went with little elbow macaroni because it allows the fork to capture a mixture of the varied ingredients in each bite. I added chopped egg for more protein and heft, and moderned up the dressing a bit by making it with the usual mayonnaise mixed with tangy Greek yogurt.
For crunchy contrast, I favored chopped onion, celery and radishes. If you want to veg it up more, you could sub in fresh corn, halved cherry tomatoes, or chunks of cucumber or zucchini.
A little Dijon mustard and Creole seasoning gave the mild dressing punch, but you can also go further with minced serrano or crushed red pepper flakes.
That’s the joy of this salad — just how versatile it can be.
We ate the pantry-friendly dish for dinner on a Friday night. Then on Saturday, I scooped leftovers into a lidded container and slipped that into a soft-pack cooler as a take-along lunch on one of our hikes.
Mid-hike, we found a spot of leafy shade near a stream running along the trail. Hiking boots off and feet in that icy water, I fished the salad out, dug in and — just like that — I’d made my very own good-times-noodle-salad summer memory.
Get the recipe: Tuna Pasta Salad
