Salad for Dinner: Complete Meals for All Seasons [Hardcover]

Jeanne Kelley (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 27, 2012

A celebration of contrasts in color, flavor, and texture—an artfully prepared salad is one of the most appealing dishes to eat, engaging all the senses. It is a basic culinary fact but often overlooked: a salad packs the most flavor because the dressing coats every bite. And with the right combination, a salad can be a full meal in itself. 

We all know it is healthier to eat more vegetables and whole grains. But how do you do so on a daily basis? This book reframes the question: Why not make greens the foundation of the plate? Smart, imaginative ideas abound: kale with lemon, parmesan, and almonds; Indonesian chicken salad with pineapple slaw; and salmon with quinoa, sorrel, and yogurt. There are super-hearty salads to satisfy even the biggest appetites, such as Korean barbecue beef salad; duck confit with fingerlings and frisee; and buttermilk fried chicken salad. These recipes help us break out of the “meat-and-three” box, leading to a new way of thinking about dinner.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Whether you're making a weeknight dinner for the family or a weekend party for a crowd, this is the book you'll reach for time and again. Salad for Dinner should be subtitled: gorgeous, satisfying, surprising meals you'll want all through the year."
--Dorie Greenspan, author of Around My French Table

“Jeanne’s book is a brilliant new take on salads—smart, thoughtful and full of stunning flavor combinations.”
—Kim Boyce, author of the James Beard Award–winning Good to the Grain 
 
“Jeanne Kelley is not like you and me. Her real genius is in assemblage, the ability to transform a seemingly random plateful of vegetation into a composition perfectly evocative of the season, and the gift of Salad for Dinner is that it lets us do the same.”
—Jonathan Gold, Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist for L.A. Weekly

“Jeanne Kelley shows you how to make a salad that will rock your dinner table. From growing your own to foraging greens, Kelley expands your salad horizons."
—Erik Knutzen, co-author of The Urban Homestead and Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post Consumer World

“Since southern California is one of the world's great salad bowls, both in terms of its superb produce and the cross-polinating ethnic variety of its population, you couldn't possibly find a better cook than Los Angeles–based Jeanne Kelley to help you discover its culinary bounty. She’s also a serious but very charming writer, and this beautifully produced book should be sold with a spatter-guard, since it's one that will live in the kitchen."
—Alexander Lobrano, Saveur writer and author of Hungry for Paris

“Jeanne’s homage to salads is wonderful. I love the clean, simple sophistication of the cookbook, and the recipes are innovative as well as informative. This book is like a salad ‘bible,’ and will inspire you to cook, garden, entertain, and appreciate all the joys of living. This is no coffeetable book—it will stay in your kitchen at all times.”
—Suzanne Tracht, Chef/Owner of Jar, Los Angeles, Top Chef Masters star, and Food and Wine Best New Chef.

About the Author

Jeanne Kelley has written for Bon Appétit magazine for twenty years and is a frequent contributor to Cooking Light and Fine Cooking. Her articles have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Prevention, and Cooking.com. She is the author of Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Rizzoli (March 27, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0847838250
• ISBN-13: 978-0847838257
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 1.1 x 11 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,422 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #1 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Vegetables & Vegetarian > Salads
  • #53 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Quick & Easy

More About the Author

Jeanne Kelley is an award-winning author, food writer and stylist. She is a long time contributor to Bon Appetit magazine and Bon Appetit books, and writes frequently for Fine Cooking and Cooking Light. Her articles and recipes have also been featured in Everyday with Rachel Ray, Prevention and Fitness. She is currently writing a cookbook for Williams-Sonoma. Around her house in Los Angeles, Jeanne has built an urban homestead--complete with beehives, chicken coop and vegetable garden.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic, Whole Food, Vegetable Based, Satisfying Eating April 11, 2012

By FemFoison

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I LOVE this cookbook! I was a little intimidated when I read how many of her own vegetables Jeanne grows, but while there are a lot of somewhat exotic ingredients included in the book, she gives clear advice on where to find them or how to make substitutions if they're not available. The book is broken up into four sections: Vegetarian, Fish & Seafood, Poultry, and Meat (I'm sure a gourmet chef would disagree with me, but I've found that even the non-vegetarian salads can be made vegetarian quite easily without a great sacrifice to taste).

Along with countless salad recipes, the book also provides instructions on how to make a plethora of side items: dressings, breads, and sauces, along with salad elements (like roasted beets) required in the recipes.

There is a handy list of salads that can be made a day (or more) ahead of time, if you want to plan for tomorrow's lunch, as well as a timeline for which items can be prepared one, two, or three days in advance to save yourself time when you're ready to throw it all together (she also provides clear instructions on how to pack a salad to preserve flavor and crispness). The book also contains a list of salads which can be made without lettuce, if you have difficulty procuring it or want to find one at quick glance, a wheel to identify what is most likely to be in season at a given time, and an incredibly detailed and inspiring index of different greens you might use in a salad. This cookbook is quickly becoming my favorite go-to for any occasion!

There is no nutrition information provided for the recipes, so if that's important to you you'll need to estimate that yourself.

The only thing I wish this book provided was a list or glossary with recipes sorted based on some of the more hard-to-find ingredients (if I'm traveling an hour out of my way to pick up a few ingredients, it would be great to be able to easily glance and see which different salads I might plan on making with them that week) - but that is nitpicking an excellent, usable cookbook!

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious and nutritious! May 30, 2012

By Jen

Format:Hardcover

I feel qualified to write a review of this book now that I've made six different salads from it. They all were solid, and I will make them again, but a few were big winners (Indonesian Slaw with Pineapple, Chicken, and Spicy Peanut Dressing; Mexican Beach Ceviche with Avocado; and Chicken, Avocado, and Mango Salad). The dressings are delicious, and Ms. Kelley's methodologies for ingredient preparation are solid. The combinations are fantastic and have really gotten me out of my rut.

I have one criticism of the book: I really wish nutrition information were provided for each recipe. I am a foodie who wants to enjoy life, but I also want to pursue a healthy lifestyle and manage my weight. I have enough sense to steer away from recipes like steak salad with blue cheese dressing, but it would still be nice to know how other recipes fit into my daily caloric intake without having to go through the laborious process of entering them into an online calorie calculator. I didn't take a star away from my rating of the book because I have this criticism of most cookbooks. Seldom do you find one that publishes full nutrition information.

I would also like to let the reader know that these recipes take me about an hour to prep on average, and I am an advanced home cook. This is the amount of time I generally spend on dinner preparation. You can take some shortcuts like using grocery store rotisserie chicken, nuts that are already roasted, etc. But in any case, I think the effort is worth it to eat food that is so fresh, healthy and delicious.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Have Cookbook!!! April 21, 2012

By Mark Gangi

Format:Hardcover

I have tried several of the recipes and found them fun to read, easy to create, and most importantly delicious to eat.

Jeanne Kelly has created a cook book that I am now using whenever I think of having or adding a salad to lunch or dinner.

The book is a good read - and funny - she compares mesclun to mescalin as she creates an in depth description of the ingredients of salads as well as identifying proportions and other musings that make me a better salad eater for reading.

Her dressings are also great. They are bold and yet are subtle.

This has become one of the top books in my cookbook library. Brava Jeanne Kelly!!!