Pasta Salad: 50 Favorite Recipes
Dedicated entirely to pasta salad’s many charms, Lauterbach’s appetizing cookbook gives readers a reason to start eating carbs again. Pasta salad usually brings to mind gummy macaroni and processed mayonnaise, but Lauterbach, whose other salad-themed books include Potato Salad and Chicken Salad, offers 50 innovative interpretations, such as Orecchiette and Roasted Butternut Squash with Honey-Ginger Dressing and Peaches and Pasta Salad with Mint. Her hearty and colorful Radiatore Beef Salad with Horseradish Dressing is a one-dish supper that’s a delicious way to use leftover steak, and her quick Pepperoni Pizza Salad is chewy and cheesy, a certain kid-pleaser. Lauterbach even makes pasta salad luxe with a Music Festival Lobster dish, a lush combination of lobster meat, tarragon, pasta shells, and homemade mayonnaise. Her recipes are all clearly written, beautifully photographed, and accompanied by charming anecdotal essays – about the restaurateur who came up with a special salad or the church potluck to which the author brings a new pasta salad every year. The book also includes a helpful guide to pasta shapes alongside instructions for blanching vegetables, toasting seeds, and whipping up vinaigrettes. The only weak note that Lauterbach hits is her recipe for Pippette and Surimi "Louis"; surimi is that sickly-sweet crab substitute made from processed fish. Why not use real crab? Otherwise, this book is a winner, making an old picnic staple seem new.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.