Simply Salads: More Than 100 Creative Recipes You Can Make in Minutes from Prepackaged Greens and a Few Easy-To-Find Ingredients

I love an exotic salad. I collect specialty cookbooks. Ergo, "Simply Salads" is now an integral part of my collection. Not without good reason! Right on the cover, Jennifer Chandler announces that her cookbook contains "more than 100 delicious creative recipes made from prepackaged greens and a few easy-to-find ingredients." My goodness, who could ask for more, but I did. I wanted proof. Let's walk through the book. (When I get a new cookbook, I start at the beginning and leaf through every single page, stopping at certain recipes to read for difficulty and ingredients. Oh my, but I want to try so many recipes from this book.) This introductory chapter displays all the packaged greens, a standard list of kitchen aids needed, and pantry items. The first recipe is "Steakhouse Wedge Salad" and what a gorgeous photo (Every single recipe has a close-up photo of the salad). By the way, each recipe comes with a homemade dressing, but, of course, store-bought can be used. Here's a Wilted Spinach Salad with mushrooms and an egg-based dressing. The book is arranged by categories of salads. The two recipes above come from the Greens chapter. Others are the various meats, Fruit, then Beans, Grains, Rice & Pasta, next Slaws, and the additional Dressings chapter. Let's continue our flip-through: Grilled Romaine with mandarin orange slices and toasted almonds with a green goddess dressing. Does it look great! Black and Blue Chicken Salad (Bleu cheese and blackened chicken), Prosciutto and Melon Salad, Beef Tenderloin Salad with Horseradish Dressing (yogurt, sour cream, horseradish, and mayonnaise--sounds heavenly, yes?), and Grilled Lamb and Tabbouleh Salad for a Middle Eastern flavor. Try this one: Seared Salmon over Mixed Greens (Spring Mix, feta crumbles, dried cranberries, and candied pecans with a Raspberry Vinaigrette. Isn't this a wow?) Or two of my favorite ingredients: Butter Lettuce with Smoked Salmon, capers, and Dill with Lemon Vinaigrette. From the Vegetable chapter: Warm Fingerling Potato Salad (you gotta love fingerlings), the fabulous Caprese Salad (tomato, fresh mozzarella, and basil with balsamic vinaigrette), Meze-in-a-Minute Platter--you will love this (Romaine lettuce, tabbouleh, hummus, dolmas [stuffed grape leaves], black olives, and tiny pita wedges. So many of these salads are so summery. My personal favorite (and that was a difficult choice) is Mango, Avocado, and Cilantro Salad made with Spring Mix and chopped red onions. Just think of those flavors and textures. I wonder if I threw in a few boiled shrimp? This fruit chapter offers so many tempting recipes: Orange and Fennel Salad, Watermelon and Argula with feta and toasted pine nuts, Arugula with figs, pancetta, goat cheese. With summer coming, a book like this, with choices and ingredients acquired ahead, coming home from work and making any of these divine salads will make your evening fresh and refreshing. Feed the kids hot dogs and put on a movie in the den. If the hu

_Simply Salads_ is number one for me. After using many salad books and having to make many separate recipes for each salad - this book comes along and tells you how to buy bags of pre-washed salad greens(yes, you can trust that- just check with the UC Berkeley newsletter who convinced me)and other pre-cut vegetables and add in easy ingredients that anyone can find and turn out really fantastic salads that the family will request over and over. The book is organized in an easy format first explaining all the salad blends, then the recipes are organized by poultry, meat, seafood, vegetable, fruit, bean,grain and pasta, and slaws, with a final chapter for vinaigrettes and dressings that is so good and so healthful that you will never go back to store bought. Easy too! Many of the salads are easily main course meals. My children love all the ones we have made and several are absolute favorites - like 'hearts of romaine with tart apples, hazelnuts and cheddar cheese (we use Pink Lady instead of Granny Smith); 'Asian noodle salad with peanut dressing'; 'creamy broccoli slaw'; and a strong favorite - 'chicken tostada salad'. Overall, this book is a great way to get the family to eat healthy foods and it is all made *so* easy. What more could you want?

`Simply Salads' by relative newcomer writer, Jennifer Chandler, is based on a simple and very attractive premise of using cut, cleaned, and bagged greens from your grocers' refrigerated produce section. I am not a great fan of these bagged goods, except for the single variety packs of spinach, arugula, and the like. And, since I am known for excessive nit-picking, let me say at the outset that this is a first rate cookbook resource for someone who really likes salads. For those people, especially people with at least three or four people to feed at a sitting who do not have a lot of time to shop for and prep the individual greens, this is a superb premise, and Ms. Chandler pulls it off with very few gotchas. The biggest question regarding these packaged greens, of course, is whether to trust the `pre-washed' claim, especially in light of the recent vegetable borne food contamination on spinach and onions. I was firmly in the camp, even before this news, of thoroughly washing all greens, sometimes several times (for spinach especially), and I was backed up in this view by no less then Emeril Lagasse who, on a show a few years back, gave a scolding look to the notion of using unwashed greens, regardless of the packaging. The author tends to believe the packagers' claim of effective pre-washing. I would recommend washing and spinning dry, regardless of how big the `prewashed' blurbs are on the package. I warmed up to Ms. Chandler's book when I saw her list of recommend kitchen tools and pantry items. These lists seem to be done by every Tom, Dick and Harry cookbook writer, and many are unnecessarily long for the `cook because I have to' working parent. Ms. Chandler's list is just about right. The only things I would add would be bacon, eggs, and buttermilk to the refrigerator list, with the understanding that you will be making buttermilk based dressings at least once a week (and buttermilk is an ingredient in many of the more popular dressings in this book). The fact that Ms. Chandler assumes you will be making your own dressings, and provides dressing recipes for each salad was the part of the book that really won me over. It also points out that this book is NOT just about speed, as many of the recipes take far longer than the famous '30 Minute Meal' rubric of Ms. R. R. The point of the bagged greens is also not primarily about economy. If anything, it's about shopping time and convenience and avoiding waste. Buying arugula, radicchio, and escarole to create a Mediterranean salad generally leads to having a whole lot of one or two of the ingredients left over. So, while the prepackaged greens may be a bit more expensive than buying them individually, there is less waste. But, as my experience with cooking for only two tells me, buying 10 oz of the packaged greens will not guarantee no waste, especially if your co-diner is finicky, and can't stand the thought of eating the same salad two days in a row. And, many greens do go downhill very quick