BLT Pasta Salad with Avocado

The BLT is one of America's perfect inventions. Three ingredients in ideal balance: smoky pork fat, acidic tomato, crisp lettuce, all held together by bread and mayonnaise. It requires nothing more. But sometimes you need to feed a crowd, and sandwiches don't travel well to picnics. This pasta salad solves that problem without betraying the original.

The trick is the dressing. Most pasta salads drown in mayonnaise until every ingredient tastes the same. Here, we use the rendered bacon fat while it's still warm, whisked with red wine vinegar and a touch of Dijon. The fat coats the pasta and carries bacon flavor into every bite. The mayonnaise appears only in moderation, enriching the vinaigrette rather than dominating it.

I've brought this dish to more summer gatherings than I can count. Church potlucks in the Midwest, backyard cookouts in Texas, beach picnics on the California coast. It travels beautifully. The avocado gets added just before serving to prevent browning, and the lettuce stays crisp because it goes on top rather than getting buried. This is the kind of practical, generous cooking that defines American summer entertaining.

Use the best tomatoes you can find. If they're not in season, don't make this salad. Wait until August when the farmers' market overflows with fruit so ripe it threatens to split its skin. That tomato juice mingles with the bacon fat dressing and creates something no winter hothouse specimen could replicate.