May is National Salad Month! Mix up some magic in the kitchen with these great items from the library:
"What does salad have the potential to be? An exciting mix of color, crunch, and flavor: Peaches over silken burrata; oil spiced with curry leaves on crunchy carrots flavored with lime and cilantro; Southwest Beef Salad with Cornbread Croutons. Explore the creative possibilities of salads, learn how to build and layer unique flavor combinations and embrace ingredients from barley, octopus, and miso to radiccchio, pattypan squash, and pears. These ATK dishes will be the star of the table. Our recipes feature salads like Pea Green Salad with Warm Apricot-Pistachio Vinaigrette and Tomato Salad with Steak Tips as well as Crispy Eggplant Salad, and riffs on classics: Caesar salad with grilled romaine or pasta salad with One-Pot Pasta Salad with Chicken (and tomatoes, olives, pepperoncini, green beans, arugula, feta). Sidebars highlight surprising salad ingredients such as couscous, purslane, curry powder, and radicchio. You'll also acquire ideas and inspiration to assemble your own salads in The Architecture of a Green Salad, with great tips on mixing and matching ingredients, flavors, and textures. The Salad Bar chapter equips you with an assortment of dressings, toppings, infused oils, and spice blends like za'atar. This is the cookbook you pull out when you want inspiration for dinner and a feast for the eyes."
Salad Freak: Recipes to Feed a Healthy Obsession by Jess Damuck
"Delicious and beautiful recipes from Martha Stewart’s personal salad chef and the self-proclaimed “Bob Ross of salads.”
Offering more than 100 inspired recipes, recipe developer and food stylist Jess Damuck shares her passion for making truly delicious salads. Salad Freak encourages readers to discover and embrace their own salad obsessions. With the right recipes, you will want to eat salad for every meal and never get bored. By playfully combining color, texture, shape, and, of course, flavor, Damuck demonstrates how a little extra effort in the kitchen can be meditative, delicious, and fun. The recipes—such as her Citrus Breakfast Salad; Tea-Smoked Chicken and Bitter Greens Salad; Caesar Salad Pizza Salad; and Roasted Grapes, Ricotta, Croutons, and Endive Salad—are meant to be hearty enough for a meal all year round but versatile enough to be incorporated into a larger menu. For Damuck, the perfect salad balances each bite, with something tart enough to twinge your cheeks, something sweet to balance out the bitter, and something with a little salty crunch to finish." Salad Freak is also available on Libby.
"Are you seeking a different kind of salad? Salad Samurai Terry Hope Romero helps you free your bowl from store-bought dressings and predictable lettuce combinations with her innovative mix-and-match basics. The hearty plant-based proteins, dairy-free "cheesy" toppings, crunchy croutons, and endless leafy, veggie, and fruit options you crave in a satisfying, lip-smacking salad are all right here -- for lunch, dinner, or even breakfast."
Food52 Mighty Salads: 60 New Ways to Turn Salad into Dinner
"Does anybody need a recipe to make a salad? Of course not. But if you want your salad to hold strong in your lunch bag or carry the day as a one-bowl dinner, dressing on lettuce isn’t going to cut it. Make way for Mighty Salads, in which the editors of Food52 present sixty salads hefty with vegetables, meats, grains, beans, fish, seafood, pasta, and bread. Think shrimp and radicchio tossed in a bacon vinaigrette, a make-ahead jumble of white beans with charred lemon and fennel, slow-roasted duck and apples scattered across spicy greens. It’s comforting food made captivating by simply charring one ingredient or marinating another—shaving some, or roasting a bunch. But because we don’t always follow recipes, there are also loose formulas for confident off-roading, as well as back-pocket tips and genius tricks for improving any old salad. Because once you know how to fix too-salty dressing, wash greens once and for all, keep an avocado from browning, and even sprout your own grains, the humble salad starts looking a lot more interesting—and a whole lot more like dinner."
"A 'saladish' recipe is like a salad, and yet so much more. It starts with an unexpectedly wide range of ingredients, such as Japanese eggplants, broccoli rabe, shirataki noodles, Bosc pears, and chrysanthemum leaves. It emphasizes contrasting textures—toothsome, fluffy, crunchy, crispy, hefty. And marries contrasting flavors—rich, sharp, sweet, and salty. Toss all together and voilà: an irresistible symphony that’s at once healthy and utterly delicious. Cooking the saladish way has been Ilene Rosen’s genius since she unveiled the first kale salad at New York’s City Bakery almost two decades ago, and now she shares 100 fresh and creative recipes, organized seasonally, from the intoxicatingly aromatic (Toasty Broccoli with Curry Leaves and Coconut) to the colorfully hearty (Red Potatoes with Chorizo and Roasted Grapes). Each chapter includes a fun party menu, a timeline of preparation, and an illustrated tablescape to turn a saladish meal into an impressive dinner party spread." Saladish is also available on Libby.
"Gone are the days when salads were disappointing meals made with wilted lettuce and a few standard veggies. In Seriously Good Salads, Nicky Corbishley shares 75 of her favorite salads, all packed with fresh flavor, loaded with exciting toppings and covered with delectable dressings. Salad lovers looking for some extra protein to accompany their veggies will drool over Chipotle Chicken Cobb Salad, Salmon Sushi Salad and Chorizo and Lima Bean Salad. Other favorites, like Cheddar, Apple and Walnut Salad, Thai-Style Slaw with Peanut Dressing and Moroccan Couscous Salad with Orange and Apricot, are piled high with yummy cheeses, grains, nuts and more to keep you feeling full and happy. Nicky even includes fantastic fruit-based salads, like Orange Salad with Pistachios and Pomegranate, and all the tasty salad dressing recipes you could possibly want. With Nicky’s innovative flavor combinations and unique ingredients, it’s easier than ever to turn a boring side salad into a showstopper of a meal the whole family will enjoy."
Salads Are More Than Leaves: Salads to Get Excited About by Elena Silcock
"For too long salads have languished on the side-lines of dining tables, reduced to mere accompaniments or starters, but what if we gave salads the limelight they deserve? Salads Are More Than Leaves brings salads center stage, showcasing dishes that are big on flavor, texture and impact. You'll never see salads in the same way again. Featuring sections on building your salad, maximising flavor and plating your salad to impress, Salads Are More Than Leaves includes over 80 recipes for salads to get excited about. Each recipe includes substitutions for vegan and vegetarian variations, suggestions for pairing salads and ways to get ahead when you're short on time."
All synopses are from the publishers.
Prefer ebooks and streaming content? Checkout Salad Days by Good Housekeeping Institute on Hoopla or stream an episode about salads on Kanopy from The Everyday Gourmet or Cooking With Vegetables.