Opa’s Nudelsalat – German Pasta Salad

For us living abroad always means exploring new and different foods. Even our children are reasonably adventurous when it comes to trying new flavours and more often than not, discover things they like and crave once we leave. These we try to recreate, even if it sometimes means traveling long distances or calling in favours to get the one ingredient that will make a dish more authentic. 

Conversely, sometimes we crave familiar foods and dishes that are simple to create and recall the comforts of a place we felt at home. This is one of them. A very easy pasta salad, sometimes made by my father-in-law on summer breaks in Germany. Now it is one of the dishes my husband has perfected but hadn’t made for quite some time. As we are currently socially distancing and I’m starting to get tired of being responsible for all the meal ideas, he pulled this one out of a dusty corner of his mind (he may have been intentionally hiding it, trying to get out of dinner duty, not too sure about that…) and made it this weekend. 

It would go brilliantly with a Bratwurst or steak but since we still don’t have our BBQ he just served it with bread and butter. I wisely kept my mouth shut as all the carbs danced into our bellies – I was just happy not to have to cook (but I did surreptitiously serve a plate of veggies on the side).

We have enjoyed this salad in South Africa, China, and Germany – it has only four main ingredients that can all be procured everywhere we have lived in some variation – but it can also be modified many different ways to suit local flavour or your taste (think: cheese, chopped peppers (capsicum), boiled eggs, capers, tuna…). 

Guten Appetit!