Book Description
Discover just how creative and satisfying salads can be with this new addition to the Essential Recipe Collection. A gorgeous collectible volume, it draws from 58 of the very best salads from 20 years of Cooking Light magazine. Recipes include appetizers, main dishes, and make-ahead meals, all promoting the Cooking Light mantra to eat smart, be fit, live well. ... Read more

Amazon.com
You know to first consult The Joy of Cooking for the perfect recipe for salads like caesar, cobb, Waldorf, or three-bean, but what about Pasta Salad with Shrimp, Roasted Red Peppers, and Black Olives, Hot Apple Slaw, or Bread and Tomato Salad? For more than 60 years, home cooks have turned to that beloved cookbook for classic recipes, definitions, and instructions for cooking techniques, but when looking for something new and different, full of spice, or slightly exotic, we tend to go elsewhere. So Ethan Becker is retraining us with The Joy of Cooking: All About Salads and Dressings. Becker--Irma S. Rombauer's grandson and Marion Rombauer Becker's son--continues the family tradition of sharing foolproof recipes for everyday cooking in everyday kitchens. But this new All About series is also beautifully illustrated, filled with brilliant color photographs, and the flavors and techniques have been updated to reflect the way we cook and eat today. Tunisian-Style Carrot Salad glows orange, gold, and red in a full-page photo across from the recipe. Flavored with lemon and orange, coriander, cumin, cinnamon, and chili, it's warm and bright, crisp and fresh. Tzatziki Potato Salad is light and tangy, well dressed with fresh mint and dill, cucumber, garlic, and yogurt. A chapter on dressings includes an exciting collection of vinaigrettes--everything from Basic to Tomato Mint and Fennel Parmesan to creative dressings like Tangerine Shallot and Chipotle Pepper Mayonnaise.

Becker's new Joy is as essential as ever. It still includes old favorites like Green Goddess dressing and molded gelatin salads, and walks us through tasks like how to cook and peel beets. But it's the new illustrations and photographs, and recipes like Quinoa Salad with Pine Nuts and Raisins and Sautéed Veal Medallions on Arugula Tomato Salad, that make you want to renew your old friendship with Joy. --Leora Y. BloomBook Description
Sixty years after Irma Rombauer advised new cooks to "Stand facing the stove," America's love affair with Joy of Cooking continues unabated. And why not? Joy in hand, tens of millions of people -- from novices to professionals -- have learned to do everything from make a meat loaf to clean a squid to frost a wedding cake. For decades, Joy of Cooking has taught America how to cook, serving as the standard against which all other cookbooks are judged.

All About Salads & Dressings upholds that standard. While keeping the conversational and instructional manner of the flagship book, All About Salads & Dressings is organized by salad type including green; vegetable and savory fruit; bean and grain; fish and shellfish; meat and poultry -- with such delicious classics and exciting innovations as Caesar Salad; Thai Beef Salad; Grilled Swordfish, Tangerine, and Jícama Salad; Tomato and Mozzarella Salad; Hot Apple Slaw; and Three-Bean Salad. And don't forget the dressings: everything from Basic Vinaigrette to creamy Green Goddess Dressing is covered. With a full primer on varieties of lettuce and suggestions for garnishing, All About Salads & Dressings illustrates how much more there is to salad than just lettuce.

Whether you belong to one of the millions of American households that already own a copy (or two) of Joy, or you have never cracked the spine of a cookbook before, Joy of Cooking: All About Salads & Dressings is for you. It is a spectacular achievement, worthy of its name. Joy has never been more beautiful.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Cookbook
All of these specialty cookbooks by Joy of Cooking hit their mark by providing need to know information and easy but elegant recipes.If you love salads -- a must have for your cookbook collection.

Highly Recommended
I highly recommend this book. The book has 8 chapters dedicated to different kinds of salads and they're:
1. About salads
2 About green salads.
3. About vegetable and savory fruit salads
4. About fruit and molded salads
5. About Bean & Grain salads
6. About fish and shellfish salads
7. About meat and poultry salads
8. About salad dressings.

I've tried several salad & salad dressing recipes and they were tasty and delicious. They have become instant hits at the family and friends gatherings. The recipes are quick and easy to apply. I'm new to cooking and I found the explanations and steps are so easy. The book is definitely worth the money I paid for.

Fab Salads
This book has a great variety of classical and new salads. They all are not only delicious, but the recipies are well-written and thorough. The book also contains other cooking tips that help make your salads better. What a great resource for summer cooking.

You can prepare a different salad every night
Cooking in the summer is drag. It can make your whole house hot.I recently found a great new book I fell in love with.This book on salads and dressing is produced by the Joy of Cooking folks.So you know they will provide excellent recipes. I have always had a hard time creating salad dressings, and original salads.Guess what?This book does it will ease. This book is well organized, and easy to read. I love all of the extra tips and extra material that they add to the book. I hope you will enjoy this book as much as I have. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Perfection Salad, a dish that won its creator first prize in a 1905 cooking contest, consisted of pristine molded aspic containing celery, red pepper, and chopped cabbage. Laura Shapiro, author of this eponymous social history, part of the Modern Library Food series, takes the salad as a model for the domestic science movement, an intriguing women's crusade of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Bent on convincing housewives that the way to domestic order lay in cooking "dainty" nutritional meals from sanitary ingredients in "scientific" kitchens, the movement helped give birth to our mass-market food scene, with its reliance on home economics precepts, processed convenience foods, and no-cook cooking--our cuisine of boil-in bags and microwave frozen dinners. Entertaining and informative, but also unexpectedly moving, the book chronicles in numerous intriguing stories the ways in which an impulse to liberate women from the drudgery and imprecision of daily food preparation led to its debasement. It's a fascinating story, of interest to anyone who wonders why and how we cook and eat--and think about food--as we do.

Beginning with portraits of early domestic movement reformers such as Catherine Beecher and Mary Lincoln, and investigating institutions like the Boston Cooking School, home of Fannie Farmer, the Mother of Level Measurements, the book then pursues "scientific cookery" into its mid-20th-century manifestation. "With the help of the new industry of advertising," Shapiro writes, "the food business was able to reflect Mrs. Lincoln's values [of food-production uniformity] by keeping its achievements in packing, sanitation, convenience, and novelty at the forefront." But greater ills ensued: the effect of the reformers, Shapiro contends, was to encourage women to become docile consumers tethered to commercial interests--and to rob our vigorous cooking and eating traditions of their rich life. In making that point, Perfection Salad reveals its true subject: the cultural priorities that defined American 20th-century life and, finally, the sorry nature of the order they established. --Arthur Boehm Book Description
Perfection Salad presents an entertaining and erudite social history of women and cooking at the turn of the twentieth century. With sly humor and lucid insight, Laura Shapiro uncovers our ancestors widespread obsession with food, and in doing so, tells us why we think as we do about food today. This edition includes a new Introduction by Michael Stern, who, with Jane Stern, is the author of Gourmet magazine's popular column Roadfood and the book Eat Your Way Across the U.S.A.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Great research, fascinating topic
This is a "must read" for anyone who fancies themself a chef, professional or home-cook. The writing is fluid and interesting, laid out in a comprehensible and sensible manner, and quite the scholarly document. Even those not intersted in cooking, but enjoy great nostalgia and history will love this book. Highly recommended as a gift where appropriate interest exists.

fascinating
the late 19th century movement for scientific household management is an almost unbelievable amalgam of middle-class protestant social standards and religious impulses, intellectural curiosity and discipline, political thought (compare it with leninism--everything the same for everyone all the time, and the middle class knows better than the proletariat), and naivete.while having less influence on its time than its proponents would acknowledge (even when reporting its failure), the movement led, through corporate exploitation and perversion, to many of the problems with eating, cooking, and "food production" in america today.it also led to many improvements we take completely for granted.

the author seems to be unaware that there was a comparable movement in britain.my british mother could remember horrific results from the school recipes she was forced to produce (one stew was so bad her friend's dogs refused it) and the british government published many educational pamphlets about "proper" methods of cooking, to the same indifference or resentment that met the domestic scientists' efforts.

i was a bit disappointed that the author did not pursue the links to the Transcendental Movement, though she did mention the connection with american protestentism. of course, the attitude of the 19th century cooks (and twentieth century nutritionists) has a long history: a Classical philospher (i'm too lazy to look up his name) wrote:"a man should eat to live, not live to eat" before the christian era.the author does discuss some of the social attitudes towards women and physical pleasure and how the ideal of a woman's being without appetite encouraged the domestic scientists to ignore the actual food in the cooking process.

while there is much to amuse in the domestic scientists' efforts and belief (and horrify--did anyone actually eat this way?), and while the author does acknowledge the dire state of production with reference to, for instance, the stock yards, i don't think she understands the appeal of predictable levening (how many of us want to make baking powder from wood ash?) preditable results (my british mother adored measuring cups and spoons--as a very short woman, she couldn't use the"two handsful of flour" recipes her family used and), and flour and sugar that are actually flour and sugar (the colonial housewife was warned by one contemporary author to make sure the sugar she bought in loaf form [and had to pulverize by hand] was not plaster of paris).the fact that 20th century corporations, especially after the second world war, {influended} their ideals into food which has caloric content without nutrition or taste should not detract from the real benefits the movement bestowed in its heyday.

this is an enjoyable popular history.i wish there had been more analysis of the movement's origins.the book's main strengths are its demonstration of how the movement's ideals were subsumed by industry and the analysis of the attitudes of the movement's founders.

the worst part is the description of the baked bean and celery "salad"--with dressing and whipped cream.that will live in my nightmares for years.and years.

Fascinating and scholarly read
Foodies and feminists alike should read this book.As part of the Modern Food Library reprints, chosen by Ruth Reichl (who is known for her good taste and her own laudable literary contributions - "Tender at the Bone" and "Comfort Me with Apples"), "Perfection Salad" describes all the elements present at the turn of the century that combined to forever change the way Americans view food.Food, its preparation and presentation became a female obsession in an time where the kitchen was really the only arena in which a woman could rule.The female nutritionists and cooks from that era seemed bent upon exerting control on SOMETHING, and that something turned out to be food - with sometimes terrible consequences.After reading "Perfection Salad", I understood the recipes that my grandmother (born in 1898) and my mother after her learned and served.Don't be frightened by the scholarly look of "Perfection Salad" - there are hilarious nuggets in the text - like color-themed menus (everything green and white, for example), putting everything into gelatin for the sake of "daintiness" (no messy lettuce leaves hanging out of your mouth) and covering absolutely anything and everything with "white sauce".For more laughs, peruse "The Gallery of Regrettable Food" by James Lileks in which he has gathered some of the most revolting-looking photos of the consequences of "Perfection Salad".

Ever wonder where pineapple-marshmallow salad comes from?
This highly readable, beautifully researched book provides a fascinating look into American "cuisine" circa 1850-1920. The Boston Cooking School and other institutions promoted Americanization through cooking conducted on scientific principles, although immigrants proved reluctant to give up their "coarse and unsavory" meals for triumphs of digestibility such as the following, served to President Wilson on his first day in office: "cream of celery soup, fish with white sauce, roast capon with two white vegetables, a fruit salad,and a dessert made with gelatin, custard, and whipped cream"(212). Other triumphs included a salad made of bananas and pimentos bound together with mayonnaise and whipped cream and, later, grapefruit pieces mixed with dessert mints. Often funny and always interesting, this book
also helps readers to understand the convenience food mania of the 1950s.

Food for Thought
I found Perfection Salad in a used bookstore in Manhattan ten or twelve years ago. I read it, was fascinated and stirred by its tale of the psychological manipulation of women - particularly, the women who were new immigrants to America at the turn of the century. I loaned the book to someone who never returned it, and have been quoting it -- and longing to re-read it -- ever since. I have just re-ordered the "back in print" edition...Here is what is important about this book: it details an overlooked, but critical, thread in the fabric of family and community life -- a thread that was quietly pulled until the greater tapestry unraveled. ... Read more

Amazon.com
If you have a thing for lettuce, a craving for greens, a garden begging to be eaten, or just a plain and simple passion for salads, Lettuce in Your Kitchen is the book for you. Coauthors Chris Schlesinger and John "Doc" Willoughby have written what might be the definitive volume on salads. Everything from the history of greens--they appear in Egyptian tomb drawings that are at least 4,500 years old--to a myriad of recipes is included. And these aren't iceberg-lettuce salads smothered in Thousand Island dressing, either. The authors believe in the full-meal deal in which salads can be appetizer, entree, or even dessert.

How about a Watercress and Grilled Chicken Salad with Mangoes and Grapes livened up with a curry-lime vinaigrette? Chris and Doc are masters of juxtaposition and tend to be more adventurous than classicists like Alice Waters. Try the Bitter Greens with Fiery Seared Squid, or Escarole with Papayas and Fried Plantains for a culinary experience not soon to be forgotten. Their approach isn't always as dramatic. There is an excellent chapter on simple salads, and gardeners looking for new ideas in late summer will appreciate the chapter on tomatoes. The most refreshing declaration the authors make is that there are no hard and fast rules in making salads. They openly encourage experimentation and substitution from the outset, and 100 different dressing recipes provide an exponential level of combinations. The ingredients guide references greens and other major ingredients, and shows what can be substituted in those desperate moments when arugula just can't be found. This is the third book from Chris and Doc. Their earlier works, Big Flavors of the Hot Sun and The Thrill of the Grill were both critically and popularly acclaimed, and Lettuce in Your Kitchen continues their tradition of bold, innovative cookbooks. --Mark O. HowertonBook Description
Welcome to the world of the well-developed salad, where ingredients like black beans, grilled chicken, and shrimp are completely at home. Where roasted pears and other fruits become sweet companions to pleasingly bitter greens. Where toasted nuts or lemon-flavored bread crumbs add an unexpected crunch. Intrepid pioneers Chris Schlesinger and John "Doc" Willoughby are geniuses of juxtaposition who redefine the salad with their own delicious spin. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Worth buying a second time!
I bought this book to replace a copy that mysteriously disappeared (someone obviously liked it too much!). The recipes truly are flavorful and unexpected and have helped me lose weight, end salad-boredom, tempt people who "never" eat salad, and earn a reputation as a super salad chef. Whether you need a refreshing main course for a hot summer day, or just some extra veggies in your diet, this book offers more ideas than you can imagine!

Not the usual suspects: these are good recipes!
The authors of Lettuce in Your Kitchen are far better known for their grilling cookbooks than for the vegetable plate. That's a darned shame, because this cookbook is an excellent resource for those of us who want to add something more to the meal than a standard greens-and-vinegarette.

Let me point out one omission that may make a difference to you: to Schlesinger and Willoughby, a salad encompasses some sort of greens, even if it's only as a garnish. As a result, you won't find a whole chapter of pasta salads or a dozen potato salads. That's fine with me, but you should be clear about what to expect.

What you SHOULD expect are clearly written recipes for salads that you probably wouldn't have invented by yourself. The book is organized by simple salads; salads for the perfect tomato; vegetable salads; salads with meat and fish; main course salads; salads with exotic flavors; fancy salads; and salads for a crowd. It's prefaced by an extrememly useful section in which the various greens are identified (with line drawings -- not quite as useful as a photo but it works), and categories that help you discover that, should your market be out of spinach, you can use baby chard or baby beet greens instead. The book has only a few photos, but they're enough for inspiration.

But what about their recipes? I've tried two with excellent success, and I have a list of additional salads to try. My "starter salad" for Thanksgiving was watercress salad with plums and scallions and a hoisin-based dressing. (Most of the dressings are more than you need, and the authors suggest that, say, the hoisin dressing is a good dip for veggies or with roast chicken.) Every plate was cleaned off, even the token non-foodie (he was instructed that he could NOT bring his own Budweiser to the meal). I also truly enjoyed the salad of Boston lettuce, mango, cucumber and avocado, served with a creamy orange-spice dressing. It was no harder to put toghether than the mundane green salad you'd bring to a buffet, and far more tasty!

Naturally, you can get less exotic (escarole with bacon, eggs, and potatoes) or far more so (arugula with lobster and pancetta with a smooth avocado dressing).

But they all have one thing in common: they're VERY easy to put together. And, if you buy the ingredients in season and avoid the handful of expensive items (Mesclun with grilled fois gras, pears, and maui onion with port wine dressing?), it'll be a snap to pull together a meaningful meal with very little effort.

I'm sold on this book. I think you'll like it, too.

The Only Salad Cookbook Worth Owning
I bought this book in hopes of having a real tool for eating better. So many cookbooks have a few ho-hum salad recipes here and there, and some of the other salad cookbooks I've seen have recipes that are just too elaborate for everyday cooking. This book has a broad range of interesting and tasty salads that are easy to make. You will never get bored, and your friends and guests won't either. The dressing part of each recipe makes a large amount so that you can have extra to use later (I always make half of the dressing recipe, toss the salad with just a few tablespoons, and still have a lot left over). So if you can only muster the energy to throw some lettuce in a bowl some night, you will have great leftover dressing to toss it with. Since I've been using this book, I have stopped buying bottled dressing and have even started growing my own salad greens.

Lucious lettuces!
Who would have thought this small book on greens, salads and dressings would be indespensible?But it is!Do these authors ever go wrong?Every single cookbook of theirs', which I have read, is far and away the best on its respecive subject.

These salads rock!
Whoever thought you could say that about a salad?But they do. They rock!For a niche cookbook, this one has a lot of variety in flavors.Each recipe gives lettuce alternatives, which is helpful if you live in an area that doesn't carry a large selection of lettuces.Some of the combinations are quiet unique, such as one concoction of watermelon, red onion and vinegar - sounds a little kooky, but once you taste it, it all makes perfect sense.This is a great book to try interesting and healthy new salad combinations.I hope you enjoy it. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

A very nice book of classic and other salads.
`Williams-Sonoma Salad' with recipes and text by Georgeanne Brennan, under the general editorship of Williams-Sonoma founder, Chuck Williams is an excellent little, inexpensive hardcover book all about salads. Unlike some other grandly titled books on salads, this little volume does two big things right for a salads only book.

For starters, it's first chapter of recipes has seven (7) recipes for major, classic salads, almost all of which originated in French, Italian, or American cuisines. These are:

Caesar Salad
Cobb Salad
Potato Salad
Salade Nicoise
Celery Root Remoulade
Insalata Caprese
Ambrosia

The second `big' thing it gets right is that the next four chapters cover salads appropriate to each of the four seasons. While your average megamart has virtually all fruits and vegetables throughout the year, there are still some important seasonal considerations that make a difference in the quality or cost of a salad. For example, asparagus and artichokes are far cheaper in the spring than at any other time of the year; tomatoes and fresh corn are at their very best if obtained locally in the summer; apples and pears are freshest in the fall, and citrus is most abundant and least expensive in the winter.

The last chapter of recipes gives us seven (7) `picnic' salads whose taste improves over time or which are easily assembled at the last minute `on site'. They are also very good for extended periods without refrigeration as they contain no mayonnaise or any other uncooked or semi-cooked eggs.

There is a non-recipe chapter at the end on `Salad Basics' covering the primary ingredients and techniques including vinaigrettes, creamy dressings, types of greens, and varieties of other ingredients. It is beyond me why this chapter is put at the back of the book when it is something you should read before embarking on the recipes or on a career of ad libbing salad making.

The only other quirk of the book's organization is that the two potato salad recipes are in two different chapters, one in the classics and one in the summer chapter. Otherwise, in general, this is a very well thought out book organization, making up for the slightly pricy $16.95 list price for 43 recipes. We are also well served by the fact that there is a full-page color snapshot of the results of each and every completed recipe. For a glossy book like this, one would feel cheated if there were pics of only half the recipes.

With all this good stuff going for it, I did find some things that were just a little off. In the recipes for the classic salads, I found at least four instructions that concerned me. The first two were where poaching chicken and cooking hard-boiled eggs were done at substantially longer times than what I have found to be necessary from both other authoritative recipes and from my own experience. I was inclined to think that the author was just trying to be careful with microbes, until I read the Caesar Salad recipe, where a totally raw egg was used to make the dressing. In all the very best recipes for Caesar Salad, the raw egg is `coddled' before adding it to the dressing. That is, it is cooked in boiling water for about a minute to kill off any microbeasties. I was also just a little concerned with the amount of fresh garlic used in the Caesar salad, and the method by which it was added. It called for first making the toasted croutons, then rubbing the fresh garlic onto the sides of all those little cubes. This seems to be a relatively tiresome method, which could easily be replaced by toasting the bread slices, rubbing on the garlic, then cutting the toast into little cubes. And even better and quite traditional technique is to rub the cut garlic into the wooden salad bowl before mixing the dressing.

All in all, this is a better salad book than others I have seen and it is a very good first salad book.
... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (8)

Somewhat disappointing
I recently purchased this cookbook after reading the good reviews here.Some of the recipes I tried did not turn out as well as I liked.The Middle Eastern Salad, for instance, seemed to contain far too much bulgur considering the amount of other ingredients. It also did not specify which type of bulgur (there are several varieties, so this could be an important piece of information).There are other such oddities throughout the book.

There are positive aspects of this book, however.There are recipes suitable for a variety of occasions (pot luck, fellowship meals, dinner at home, picnics).Most can be prepared quickly with ingredients that are commonly found in most supermarkets.

Scrumptious
Well presented,unique cookbook that provides a wealth of new ideas for
healthy but mouth-watering full menus for everyday and special meals. Well organized,
creative and yummy.

Great, easy to follow recipes
I have all of Dot Vartan's cookbooks, including Mad About Muffins and Is it Soup Yet and like those books, this book has great, easy to make (and follow) recipes. I especially like the meal planner; this way I don't have to think too much!I highly recommend this book.

Wonderful, versatile cook book.
Dot Vartan's latest cookbook, "Delicious Salad Meals," is a must for any cook who needs ideas for light, delicous meals that are not complicated to prepare.What I like most about the book is the organization, which divides the salad/meal recipes by type, e.g., poultry, meat, seafood, etc., and then once you choose a recipe, side dishes are given that complement to complete a meal.The recipes are delicious, easy to follow, well written, and include ingredients that are not hard to find at the grocery store.A fine resource for weekday meals for those who want to put together a healthy meal for the family after a day at work.The book provides great ideas for party salads, too! And I've given many copies away as hostess gifts.A versatile, affordable cook book that I recommend highly.

Fun, delicious salads
I love the way the book is organized into 5 chapters.Each recipe is easy to read and in almost every case, I already have all of the ingredients on hand. It's also nice having the recipes for bread, muffin and dessert accompaniment right there on the next page. ... Read more

Book Description
Tender spring asparagus. Luscious summer berries. Spicy autumn greens and bright winter citrus. More than any other dish, salad allows the characteristic flavors of each season to shine. A simple combination of fresh ingredients in a salad from your kitchen can be more impressive than even the most elaborate dish.

Williams-Sonoma Collection Salad offers more than 40 wonderful salad recipes, grouped by season to emphasize the importance of using ingredients as they reach their natural peak of ripeness. Whether you have a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes in your backyard or a handful of wine-colored beets from the farmers' market, there's a recipe here that offers a delicious way to prepare them. A chapter of portable salads will tempt you to plan a picnic, while a selection of classic salads -- from Cobb salad to celery rémoulade -- rounds out the collection.

Full-color photographs of each dish help make the choice an easy one, and each recipe is accompanied by a photographic sidebar that highlights an essential ingredient or cooking technique, making Salad much more than a great collection of simple recipes. An informative basics section and extensive glossary fill in all you need to know to create the perfect salad.

Salads bring out the best in fresh seasonal ingredients, whether they are delicate spring lettuces paired with soft goat cheese or crisp autumn apples tossed with toasted pecans.

Williams-Sonoma Collection Salad offers more than 40 easy-to-follow recipes, including both classic favorites and fresh new ideas. In these pages, you'll find inspiring salads designed to suit occasions throughout the year -- from an informal summer picnic to an elegant dinner with friends. This vividly photographed, full-color recipe collection, appealing to both novice and experienced cooks, will become an essential addition to your kitchen bookshelf.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great Recipes!
I absolutely recommend this book. The salads are tasty, fulfilling and varied enough to keep you wanting to try a different one everyday of the week.

A very nice book of classics and seasonal salads.
`Williams-Sonoma Salad' with recipes and text by Georgeanne Brennan, under the general editorship of Williams-Sonoma founder, Chuck Williams is an excellent little, inexpensive hardcover book all about salads. Unlike some other grandly titled books on salads, this little volume does two big things right for a salads only book.

For starters, it's first chapter of recipes has seven (7) recipes for major, classic salads, almost all of which originated in French, Italian, or American cuisines. These are:

Caesar Salad
Cobb Salad
Potato Salad
Salade Nicoise
Celery Root Remoulade
Insalata Caprese
Ambrosia

The second `big' thing it gets right is that the next four chapters cover salads appropriate to each of the four seasons. While your average megamart has virtually all fruits and vegetables throughout the year, there are still some important seasonal considerations that make a difference in the quality or cost of a salad. For example, asparagus and artichokes are far cheaper in the spring than at any other time of the year; tomatoes and fresh corn are at their very best if obtained locally in the summer; apples and pears are freshest in the fall, and citrus is most abundant and least expensive in the winter.

The last chapter of recipes gives us seven (7) `picnic' salads whose taste improves over time or which are easily assembled at the last minute `on site'. They are also very good for extended periods without refrigeration as they contain no mayonnaise or any other uncooked or semi-cooked eggs.

There is a non-recipe chapter at the end on `Salad Basics' covering the primary ingredients and techniques including vinaigrettes, creamy dressings, types of greens, and varieties of other ingredients. It is beyond me why this chapter is put at the back of the book when it is something you should read before embarking on the recipes or on a career of ad libbing salad making.

The only other quirk of the book's organization is that the two potato salad recipes are in two different chapters, one in the classics and one in the summer chapter. Otherwise, in general, this is a very well thought out book organization, making up for the slightly pricy $16.95 list price for 43 recipes. We are also well served by the fact that there is a full-page color snapshot of the results of each and every completed recipe. For a glossy book like this, one would feel cheated if there were pics of only half the recipes.

With all this good stuff going for it, I did find some things that were just a little off. In the recipes for the classic salads, I found at least four instructions that concerned me. The first two were where poaching chicken and cooking hard-boiled eggs were done at substantially longer times than what I have found to be necessary from both other authoritative recipes and from my own experience. I was inclined to think that the author was just trying to be careful with microbes, until I read the Caesar Salad recipe, where a totally raw egg was used to make the dressing. In all the very best recipes for Caesar Salad, the raw egg is `coddled' before adding it to the dressing. That is, it is cooked in boiling water for about a minute to kill off any microbeasties. I was also just a little concerned with the amount of fresh garlic used in the Caesar salad, and the method by which it was added. It called for first making the toasted croutons, then rubbing the fresh garlic onto the sides of all those little cubes. This seems to be a relatively tiresome method, which could easily be replaced by toasting the bread slices, rubbing on the garlic, then cutting the toast into little cubes. And even better and quite traditional technique is to rub the cut garlic into the wooden salad bowl before mixing the dressing.

All in all, this is a better salad book than others I have seen and it is a very good first salad book.
... Read more

Book Description
The salad days are here! Barbara Scott-Goodman proves that there's no limit to the ways in which nature's freshest ingredients can be combined to make healthy, great-tasting salads for every palate, for every diet, and for every part of the meal. In Sensational Salads, she offers 70 unique and imaginative recipes for low-calorie, high-flavor dishes using greens, vegetables, fruits, and grains, as well as meats and seafood.

Included are mouth-watering recipes for appetizers, side dishes, and entrées-such as Winter Fruit Salad with Goat Cheese and Walnuts; Savory Warm Duck, Orange, and Olive Salad; and Thai-Style Beef and Mint Salad-along with vinaigrettes and dressings. The book also features sections on selecting and using the wide variety of greens found in markets today, in addition to information on variations and menu planning. Sensational Salads is an invaluable resource for the growing number of home cooks who are as passionate about healthy eating as they are about delicious food. AUTHOR BIO: Barbara Scott-Goodman is the and art director of several books about food and entertaining. She also writes and creates recipes and menus for Starchefs.com and American Express's Tables magazine. Judd Pilossof's photographs have appeared in all the major food magazines, and his advertising clients include Starbucks and Campbell's. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A collection of good salad recipes in a mediocre book.
`Sensational Salads' by book assembler and editor, Barbara Scott-Goodman is a great idea with a mediocre realization. Salads are one of those culinary topics which deserves at least one or more great books. What the author has given us is nothing more than a collection of vaguely original salad recipes with poor exposition on ingredients and what I believe are modestly good results.

There are at least four ways in which this could have been a much better book.

The first would have been to begin with an exposition on major salad ingredients, their availability, their tastes, and their affinities with other ingredients. One volume that does this well is my old copy of a `Better Homes and Gardens Salads' volume.

The second would have been to make a point of including all major named salads, including the Salade Nicoise, the chef's salad, the Caprese Salad, Panzanella, Cobb Salad, Salad Lyonnaise, and so on. One volume which comes close to doing this is my old friend the `Better Homes and Gardens Salads' and the `Williams-Sonoma Salads' volume.

The third would be to do salads by the seasons. An excellent example of such a presentation is `Twelve Months of Monastery Salads' by Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourrette. This does salads not only by season but also by the month, based on produce that comes into season in each month. The author's introduction pays some lip service to choosing the recipe based on what is available and fresh in the market, but there is nothing in the book which assists us in doing the same thing.

The fourth would have been to devote the time and energy into addressing a single type of salad, such as the `Pasta Salad' by Barbara Lauterbach.

Ms. Scott-Goodman's book has the appearance of a volume on an express to the discount table at Barnes and Noble or Borders. Two signs are the fact that the author's bio gives her virtually no culinary credentials and that the bio of the photographer is longer than that of the author. These are only symptoms. There is nothing to say that a culinary newcomer can't put together an excellent book. Unfortunately, there is little in this book which distinguishes it from the very good to excellent titles cited above.

I will give Ms. Scott-Goodman some credit for organizing her chapters by major ingredient. My sense of the logical is just a bit offended when there are chapters on vegetables and beans. Beans are vegetables! That same sense is also offended by the chapter title `vinaigrettes & dressings'. Vinaigrettes are, of course, just a special type of dressing.

The introduction to the chapter on `Greens' shows a remarkably myopic view of the history of salads when the author describes the archetype for the recently past salads as being a wedge of iceberg lettuce and a bottled dressing. This may have been true of many suburban midscale restaurants, but all the classics mentioned above plus many more have been around for most or all of the 20th century and people enough interest in food to look up salads in a good cookbook would have found recipes for one or more of these classics.

The very first recipe in the `Greens' chapter annoys me just a bit when the first ingredient is `4 cups mixed salad greens'. For the moment, I will forget that you can find cellophane bags of `mixed salad greens' in large supermarket produce departments. Would it not have been better to specify either such a bag of greens or a list of specific greens names such as endive, frisee, arugula, and red leaf lettuce? This same recipe calls for vinaigrette of balsamic vinegar and olive oil, with salt and pepper being tossed in after mixing the greens with the vinaigrette. My first problem with this is that I doubt most people would associate balsamic vinegar with a `classic' mixed greens salad. Red wine vinegar is much more appropriate here, as this recipe is probably most accurately traced to the French cuisine. My second problem is why in the world would you toss in the salt and pepper instead of adding it to the vinaigrette? The very first vinaigrette recipe in the last chapter is simply oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

None of these little things mean that this is a BAD book. It is simply a journeyman author's effort that includes fairly good recipes but practically nothing special. There is no spark on inspiration that gives us some extra utility. There is certainly little which justifies the book's title.

All in all, for decent recipes presented in a clear manner with average to better than average photographs, I give it four stars, but suggest you look for something better unless you can get this volume for a steeply discounted price. Other books on the same subject are better. The food is good but the communication breaks down here and there.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The most diverse and illustrated cookbook ever
This book made me CRAVE a salad.It is the one an only book that has taught me how to work with greens and make them appetizing. Even my husband who is NOT a salad eater considered them a "real" meal. There isa color illustration per recipe which is very important.The photos gaveme the incentive to buy the book at first. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Out of the Ordinary
Have had this book on my cookbook shelf for some time.Recently,picked this book up again and knew instantly it could help us prepare (and eat!) healthier meals.Lots of variety in preparing simple GREEN dishes.The salads are beautiful (photography is good!) and foods taste even better than they look.For novice cooks, be sure to have the ingredients on hand.For the more advanced, you can improvise with various greens, dressings, etc. and not miss anything in flavor or appearance.

Some Great Gems hidden among average
Don't even remember how or when we acquired this, but one particular recipe has been a knockout that we prepare and serve often:Chicken, Avocado and Mango Salad with creamy curry and macadamia dressing.

Few other spectaculars, and the rest are just so-so. ... Read more

Book Description
Everybody knows that a good salad makes a meal complete and now with this new addition to the 101 line, a salad is never more than a few ingredients away! The book includes Leafy Salads, Main Course Salads, Pasta Salads, BBQ and Picnic Salads, Veggie Salads, Fruit Salads, and Dessert Salads, with an amazing variety of recipes and flavors to suit all occasions. Try Sweet Fiesta Salad, Chinese Chicken Salad, Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad, Cauliflower Shrimp Salad, Cool Pear Salad, Pistachio Salad, and Best Ever Frog-Eye Salad!
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Love this little book.
This simple little book has great ideas for lunch or dinner.Might order another for my college age son. ... Read more

Book Description
Every proper salad should come to the table well dressed. Salad Dressings is a veritable wardrobe of vinaigrettes and creamy dressings that are easy to make and even easier to store. Flavors such as tarragon, roasted red pepper, or crumbled Stilton cheese enhance simple salads of tender greens, while creamy varieties such as Tart Russian or decadent Blue Cheese pair sumptuously with heartier flavors and textures. Exotic dressings like Thai Peanut or Indian Curry add distinctive, unusual flavors and elevate the ordinary. Salad recipes sprinkled throughout plus quick recipes for crunchy toppings—think flavored croutons or spiced nuts—top off this handy guide to salad fare extraordinaire. ... Read more

Book Description

Long gone are the days when people created their salads by purchasing a head of iceberg lettuce and a head or romaine, cutting up a tomato and a boiled egg and adding some wishbone dressing. Today anyone can create a delicious gourmet salad by picking up one of the hundreds of bagged salad mixes available and adding ingredients to create masterpieces such as:

• Mandarin Chicken Salad with Toasted Sesame Vinaigrette
• Classic Caesar Salad with Herb Croutons
• Spinach Salad with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

Each salad has dressing recommendations and recipes, menu ideas, and nutritional information. The book contains recipes for more than 100 salads and dressings.

Customer Reviews (9)

Jennifer Chandler//!!One ofthe brightest and kindest chef, author extraordinaire!!!
What a great job from this young and rising star in the culinary world and a writer as well.Excellent job for such an extraordinary mother , wife, and citizen of Memphis..So impressed with theperson, I bought the book for a gift, unseen.She really is a remarkable talent, and excels in anything she does. My mother really liked the book.. and knew her as well..The pictures are fantastic and the recipes will knock you out..Congrats to such a wonderful person... and the world , a better place just because she is here!

Great recipes, easy to make from simple ingredients
I thoroughly enjoy the recipes in this cook book.Jennifer uses package salad greens that are easily found at any grocery store.The other ingredients are easy to find vinegars, oils and juices.I have made several salads and have enjoyed each one.My favorite thing about these recipes is that they are all quick to put together.Anyone looking for restaurant quality salads that are quick and inexpensive to make will love this book.

Outstanding recipes
"Simply Salads" is a book full of great salad recipes.I was hesitant to buy the book at first since the recipes used prepackaged greens.I have never, ever seen prepackaged greens that look very fresh, certainly not as fresh as what I see in the photographs (which are excellent -- lots of great pictures).I just decided to buy the greens fresh and make the salads by mixing the greens myself.I'm glad I did, and I found that Ms. Chandler had added the complete list of ingredients for each type of prepackaged green in the front of the book, which helped a lot.It was easy to make substitutions in various recipes.For instance, for the "Mandarin Orange Slaw" (which is delicious) I used fresh satsuma orange slices and fresh juice instead of the canned mandarin oranges and canned juice.I bought the greens that make up the Italian Blend and mixed them for the "Cheese Tortellini Salad with Sun-Dried Tomato Vinagrette" -- it was fantastic.This book is full of great recipes, and you can change them to suit your own tastes as I did.I would love to know, however, where the author finds those beautiful packaged greens... I wish we had them as nice as that in our stores!If you do have access to such things you will be able to make the salads very quickly, but I did not find it took that much time to do it from fresh, individual bunches of greens.

Simply Salads
A beautiful book...and the salads are excellent. I have enjoyed the different salad dressings as well as the variety of salads.

Great Salad Cookbook with Worthwhile Pictures
I purchased this cookbook based on the other reviews on Amazon; it is absolutely worth it! There are at least 100 recipes and then if you use mix and match variations you could easily have 100 more. Each recipe comes with a color photo as well as a dressing suggestion.Ms. Chandler offers homemade dressing recipes but you could buy a bottled version if you don't want to make your own.But they are so simple to make and quite a bit healthier (no added preservatives, MSG, etc) that you'll find your self just making dressing from now on.
Many of the salads are complete meals just by adding a meat (she has chapters devoted to chicken, beef, seafood and pork) plus vegetarian options by adding beans, chickpeas, fruit etc.There's a great 7 layer salad that is to die for.
Overall a great cookbook, nice photos, great recipes.Well worth it.
Also, a great gift for someone trying to lead a healthier lifestyle by eating and using truly fresh ingredients.
... Read more

Book Description

Super Salads can boost your mood, help cleanse the impurities in your body, and taste divine. From organic vegetables to exotic fruits, there are more than enough ingredients available year-round to create a variety of nutritious and tasty salads. The salad recipes in this book provide added health benefits such as a brain boost, anti-oxidants, extra vitamins and minerals.

Product Description
Salad Inspiration is a collection of delicious salads ranging from familiar favorites to fresh alternatives.The recipes will generate new ways to make salad with an intention to inspire the creative cook.Enjoy the diversity of the recipes and the fantastic pictures of each salad as an example.Bon Appetit! ... Read more

Product Description
There is much more to salads than just the simple--though tasty--green leaves served before, with, or after the main course. Salads with eggs, fish, shellfish, meat, poutry or cheese are much more substantial, and can be served as light lunches for evening meals on their own... ... Read more

Book Description

Over eighty delectable recipes.

Salads can be so much more than a side dish.

Elevating salads to their rightful place as stylish, healthy, satisfying dishes, The Well-Dressed Salad offers more than eighty recipes exploring exciting textures and zingy flavors.

As well as putting a fresh spin on classic salads, such as Caesar salad, the book brings together unusual salad dishes from around the world where salads are an art form: the Mediterranean, North Africa, Asia and South America.

The chapters are organized by ingredient, from beans, lentils and grains, leaves and greens, to vegetables, fruit, noodles and rice to meat, fish and poultry. Each recipe is accompanied by:

• Advice on possible variations
• Serving ideas and advance preparation
• Classification of each salad as an appetizer, main course or side dish
• Recipes for tasty dressings and vinaigrettes
• Tips on choosing and using ingredients.

Each recipe has been tested twice to guarantee a stunning success every time.

Customer Reviews (1)

a salad lover
I have now made my 12th recipe from this book and it is wonderful.My husband and I love to eat big salads for dinner and this is perfect for just that.It has all the great classics but much more.My favorites are the spinach salad with warm proscuitto dressing and the Middle Eastern Fattoush salad with crispy pitas.All of the salads have full on flavour and are healthy to boot!I would highly recommend this. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great book!
This book is what I've always wanted a cookbook to be, it includes a shopping, equipment and ingredient list with pictures for each and every one of the recipes, and rich, full color photographs not only of the finished product, but of the process and techniques. The recipes, which are already so great and so easy, include variations...what can I say, this book is one great find! ... Read more

Book Description
This collection of over 200 recipes shows just how much more there is to salad than a handful of lettuce leaves and a few tomatoes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Wonderful!
I picked this up as a remainder book and ended up back at Amazon buying copies for all my family. This is not a traditional salad cook book but an excursion into areas of salad making that keeps coming up with new twists that delight.

There are traditional salads included in this book, but the range of simple, different options is astounding; fennel, orange and olives is always a hit.

I had to completely revamp my cooking style when my wife, as a result of lupus,went largely vegetarian with seafood being okay. Since we live on the Oregon coast, switching from beef based cooking was, at first, simple but boring. Then, once I stumbled across this book, a good 40 to 50% of my meals come from it, and both of us love the results

Compared to some of my other favorite cook books, this is one where I have done 15 of the recipes and am still working my way through it. Pretty good considering that most of my cook books give me 3 to 4 new recipes and some pretty pictures. "Salad!" has become my main cook book when I want to go "venturing", and has been a wonderful guide to new options.

I didn't like it
The book has so many recipes but unfortunately, they are not classic salad recipes. Some of vegetable salad recipes involve flowers, tongues, livers, fruits such as apples, grapes, etc. I thought they were too weird. I never eat flowers, tongues and livers nor do I put grapes or apples in my vegetable salads. It could be that I'm very old fashioned.I love classic salad recipes that you usually hear about or eat at the restaurants. Too bad, this book lacked in that area. Though, it does include 200 new/different recipes. If you want to try out new/different recipes, then you should buy this book but if you want a book filled with classic salad recipes, then I highly recommend "Joy of Cooking: All About Salads & Dressings".

Cool, but...
This book is impressive, but lacks in some places. I would definately recommend it if you are a Salad Lover. ... Read more