When pasta salad is good, it is wonderful, light and refreshing, satisfying but not too filling, full of contrasting flavors and textures. It's a shame that it's rarely good. Pasta salad is one of the more misunderstood dishes of contemporary cooking. Influenced, perhaps, by potato salad or the macaroni salads of childhood, most cooks make the mistake of using mayonnaise-based dressings. Pasta salads are almost always served too cold, too, so that even if they are tossed with an appropriate vinaigrette or other light dressing, the oil has congealed and the flavor deteriorated.
Few foods are more dismal.
If you avoid these pitfalls, use a good pasta, cook it in plenty of boiling salted water, rinse it thoroughly to cool it, and drain off all excess water, pasta salads can save you on a hot day. If you want to prepare the salad early in the day so that you won't have to boil water in the afternoon heat, cook the pasta, rinse it, toss it with a tiny bit of olive oil, and refrigerate it. Finish making the salad about 30 minutes before dinner. You'll be pleased with the results, I promise. Ever since my daughter Nicolle first mixed these ingredients together one summer afternoon, we have eaten it regularly throughout tomato season.