Starchy ingredients

Any composed salad can be stretched with a starchy ingredient such as pasta or rice. The French have never been very fond of pasta salads, although La Cuisine de Madame Saint-Ange, the French equivalent to Joy of Cooking, offers a salade de spaghetti that includes cold chicken, ham, celery, artichoke hearts, a truffle, hard-boiled eggs, and parsley. I find the idea of cold long pasta a little creepy and prefer to use easier-to-manage short pasta, such as macaroni, penne, or orechiette. I also find that most pasta salads contain too much pasta and not enough bright, tasty ingredients to provide contrasting flavors, textures, and colors. I prefer to add relatively small amounts of cooked pasta to seafood or meat salads.