Posted on: Wednesday, February 9, 2005

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
A plea for mac salad simplicity

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

When it comes to macaroni salad, there are two kinds of people in the world: Purists and Kitchen Sinkers.

My mom and I are Purists: elbow mac, mayo (Best Foods), Italian parsley. For her, minced onion. For me, chopped olives. Pau.

My brother is a Kitchen Sinker. He tosses in crab, tuna, peas, black olives, hard-boiled eggs, celery and more.

This is just wrong. There are too many ingredients competing for flavor and texture attention. The more ingredients you add, the more you mix, creating an unpleasant mushiness factor.

Mainly, it's wrong because you lose the sybaritic essence of salad: the rich, salty mayo creaminess wrapped around the satisfying pasta chewiness.

But, hey, I know I'm a voice crying in the wilderness. So, when I'm tasked with making the mac or potato salad now, I've taken to holding out a Purist portion for me, then letting the Kitchen Sinkers create their nefarious mixes.

The mac battle was in hiatus last year, however, because everyone — including brother — had gone low-carb.

It was at this point that L & L Drive-Inn made news with its low-carb plate lunches, offering double protein, hold the mac. Now they're making news with "The Mac is Back," a promotion carried out in their Mainland stores. Noting that orders for the low-carb plates had slumped, they celebrated the return of interest in macaroni salads by running a macaroni salad recipe contest for which the prizes were four trips to Hawai'i.

Entries came from California, Washington state and Nevada, and the winners were determined by a taste-off here judged by representatives of Best Foods, Costa Pasta and Hawaiian Airlines.

The overall winner was Emeraech "Emily" DeCrescenzi of South Pasadena, Calif., with Grandpa Benton's Macaroni Salad. The three other winners were Jan Pateray-Ching, Lakewood, Calif.; Noemi Selisker, La Mirada, Calif.; and Cathy Stomsvik, Fair Oaks, Calif.

DeCrescenzi's was a distinctly local-style salad from the Kitchen Sink school, featuring fish cake, tuna and peas. She's a former Islander (Honolulu and Kona), and this is her dad's recipe (she's got two daughters who call him Grandpa, thus the name). "The only time I ever eat mac salad is when he makes it. I've never been a big mayonnaise fan. But now we have proof that my dad is the Mac Salad King," she wrote in an e-mail to The Advertiser.

Grandpa Benton's Macaroni Salad: Combine 1/2 pound macaroni, cooked according to package directions and chilled; 1 cup Best Foods mayonnaise; 1/2 log kamaboko (fish cake), cut into 1/2 inch strips; 2 hardboiled eggs, chopped; 1/2 can water-packed, white albacore tuna, drained; 1 cup cooked, chilled peas; salt and pepper. Top with 8 chopped black olives; 1/4 cup chopped celery; paprika.

• Per serving: 380 calories, 25 g total fat, 3.5 g saturated fat, 80 mg cholesterol, 460 mg sodium, 27 g carbohydrates, 2 g fiber, 3 g sugar, 13 g protein.