Twelve Months of Monastery Salads: 200 Divine Recipes for All Seasons

This is truly a wonderful salad book - will make you famous for your dressings and salads. Not one bad recipie and easy to follow with few ingredients. I buy it for my friends and family too.

As a perpetual dieter I need to eat vegetables, a lot. I'd become very sick of salad and making them when I came across this book in my library. My entire family loved the couple of recipes I tried, and I was happy because everything tasted very good, so I bought the book. There is a great variety of salad types from potato and pasta to leafy and everything in between. The book is organized by season but don't be afraid to explore outside the current season, since different regions have different growing seasons, and grocery stores often (not always) have good produce out of season.

I love salads but get a little bored with them. This is an amazing cook book because the salad recipies are unique and delicious. This book reflects the love of gardening of Brother Victor-Antoine. Recipies are divided into seasons so that you can cull from your own garden or easily find the ingredients you'll need at the right time of the year. You'll love Brother Victor and his ingenuous receipies. It's great getting cooking advice from a monk!

This is the tenth cookbook by Benedictine Monk Brother Victor-Antoine D'Avila-Latourrette and the fifth that is organized to reflect recipes by season or by other milestones in the course of the year. The recipes also tend to reflect the diet of a Benedictine monastery in upstate New York, which means there is very little protein in the dishes aside from legumes, cheese, eggs, and canned fish.The simple monastic calling does not keep Brother Victor from being a bit trendy in his choice of recipes and greens. In his catalogue of nineteen salad greens, he includes Mesclun, Belgian endive, mache, radicchio, and watercress. And, although he includes iceberg lettuce, he doesn't really like it and confesses that when they have it, the brothers feed it to their chickens.The list of greens is followed by a `Useful tips for Salad Preparation', which are, indeed, useful, albeit, short. A much more interesting section on `Types of Salads' follows, which lists the eleven types of salad recipes listed in this book. After reading the recipes, one really wishes the author had built his chapters on these eleven types rather than the truly artificial use of months of the year. The salad types are classic international salads; rustic salads; exotic salads; creative salads; mixed salads; pasta salads; egg, cheese and fish salads; Italian salads; French regional salads; Saint's salads; and fruit salads. It is obvious that these categories are artificial and overlap in the extreme, but they are still more useful for finding a salad to fit a particular occasion than the artificial organization by month.The organization of recipes by month is not entirely arbitrary, as fall and winter salads do contain a higher proportion of apples, pears, potatoes, and citrus than do summer salads. And, my `Field Guide to Produce' does say that greens such as arugula, chicory, and endive are available the year around. But, I wonder when I see tomatoes or new potatoes in recipes for February. If I were rating the book exclusively on the accuracy of its seasonality, I might give it only a B-. Luckily, there is much more of value to the book.As you can see from the types of salads, the book contains many classic salad recipe names such as Caesar salad, Waldorf salad, and Salade Nantaise. While the names are classic, I believe many of the recipes take some liberties with the classic ingredients. Brother Victor's Caesar salad, for example, is based on Boston lettuce rather than being done entirely with the much more commonly specified Romaine lettuce, as recommended by such diverse sources as James Beard, Martha Stewart, and `Better Homes and Gardens'. All three sources also include anchovies, which Brother Victor leaves out. Brother Victor also leaves out Worcestershire sauce and egg yolk, specified by two out of my three authorities. In its place, Brother Victor adds Tabasco sauce. Brother Victor also adds blue cheese, which none of my sources specify. None of this is to suggest that thi

Organized by season, Brother Victor's latest (after "Twelve Months of Monastery Soups") begins with a primer on ingredients and preparation. A list of salads-by-category follows: classic international (Indian Curried Lentil) rustic (Mushroom and Arugula), exotic (Madagascar Date-Nut), creative (Herbed Tofu), pasta (Mint Flavored Fusilli), fish (Salmon and Avocado), Italian (Artichoke Heart), French (Salade au Roquefort), fruit (Persimmon and Greens), and Saints' (St. Cecile Cauliflower Salad).A charming book, sprinkled with aphorisms from the likes of M.F.K. Fisher and Helen Nearing, it adheres to vegetarian, monastic principles (which do not exclude seafood or dairy), and indulges in a few exceptions, like a delicious caviar dressing.Fresh ingredients are emphasized, of course, but Brother Victor is not above using canned fava beans and jarred artichoke hearts in his Etruscan Salad or a jar of taramasalata (Greek dip made with carp roe) in a scrumptious egg salad. He offers serving suggestions, including temperature, presentation and course, and ends with a chapter on flavored vinegars, oils and dressings. Attractive and eclectic.