Chef notes
In the 1990s, my sister and I shared a house in the Hollywood Hills. I was going to law school. She was getting famous. We thought we were hot stuff throwing house parties. Some pretty famous people would come, but mostly nonfamous, nice people. Years later, I ran into someone who had the pleasure of attending a few of our shindigs. He said, and I quote, “Oh my god, do you remember your goat cheese parties?!” “Our what, now?” I asked. “Your goat cheese parties! That’s what we called them!”
Dear reader, where my sister and I thought we were throwing “bangers,” we were, in fact, just filling people up with pregame goat cheese. While the rest of Los Angeles on Friday night was a den of late-night libation and excess, my sister and I had managed to corner the market on early evening wholesomeness with a side of goat cheese.
Why goat cheese? Well, we really liked it, and we thought it was fancy. We put it in everything. Pasta salads, lentil salads, bruschetta, skewers with watermelon. We treated goat cheese like salt; everything benefited from a little. And we’d festoon our really big dining table with trays, bowls and platters of goat cheese–speckled offerings. To be fair, we also offered a buffalo mozzarella-heavy caprese salad, arranged on pattern-heavy Cottura pottery, for variety. But goat cheese was queen. The pasta salad really is a banger, though, and it features the best of the late-summer garden.
Technique tip: When pasta salad sits around for a while, the pasta continues to absorb moisture from whatever sauce is coating it and when it has cheese, can go from smooth to gritty. To help bring the sauce back, add a few tablespoons of warm water to rehydrate the sauce.
