Salad as a Meal: Healthy Main-Dish Salads for Every Season

Salad as a Meal
I like the recipes in Patricia Wells cookbook. This is her 12th book and her recipes are from trips to France and Greece. Her vegetarian recipes go great with her bread recipes and fish, chicken and beef. I tried her eggplant, tomatoes, goat cheese and tapenade recipe and it was wonderful! I make a lot of salads and have always tried to find recipes for salad dressings. Patricia Wells has great ideas for dressings and they are simple and easy and taste great! If this is something that you too are looking for then I definitely recommend this cook book.

Very mixed opinion on this one
In some ways this is an extremely poor book on salads:1. There is an awful lot of non-salad recipes for a book with “salad” in the title.2. There are an awful lot of odd ingredients (fish cheeks– preferably halibut cheeks?!).3. There are some weird issues with the typeface, so that one and a half comes out looking like 11/2. It took me a minute to realize that was not 11 divided by 2.4. There are some very fussy steps, involving things such as wood chips and some stove-top contraption (conveniently sold by Ms. Wells herself, right here on Amazon). “Salad as a Meal” implies everyday cooking, not ordering halibut cheeks from Alaska and building a fire over my kitchen stove.5. Very, very, very few photos of the actual completed recipes. Instead, if a recipe uses lemons, there is a very pretty photo of a bowl of lemons.6. For my tastes, the writing is a little too personal and a little too pretentious (why she cannot possibly resist writing “haricots vert (green beans)” each time is beyond me).7. I would never, ever go along with her “love of raw food”, including shell fish and beef.So why 3 stars and not just 1? Because there are some great ideas in here, you just have to make a lot of substitutions. Instead of tatsoi, red mustard and mizuna, just use strongly flavored salad greens. Instead of Halibut Cheeks, just use chunks of firm fish or scallops, and for “sucrine”, use iceberg lettuce (she actually suggests these substitutions). Instead of the complicated grilling she calls for, just stick it under your broiler. Don’t worry about the garlic cloves being “plump and moist”. As long as they are decently fresh, you’ll be fine. Best quality French Brine-Cured Black Olives? I think the ones in my supermarket’s olive bar will do just fine. Almost every recipe has some exotic version of something (French Espelette Pepper Mustard, baby peppers, heirloom tomatoes, buffalo milk riccota cheese, fresh fennel fronds) that, although laughable in its preciousness, can be easily subbed (with grainy mustard, bell peppers, tomatoes, regular old riccota, and parsley, respectively). Oh yeah, and cook all animal products before using them– steamed scallops will be just as nice as raw and thin slices of cooked beef will work just fine.

Not a salad book
I wanted a recipe book for salad. That isn’t what this is. I’m quite adventurous, and will eat almost anything, but there may not be one recipe in this book that I will use.

I was not disappointed..
Patricia Wells is a very well known chef…I h ave seen her many times on the Food Network…so I wanted to get her book…I was not disappointed…even thou g h there is a nu mber of recipes I would not be able to use for the whole family due to limited tastes…but enjoyed it…

I thoroughly enjoyed this cookbook which was full of wonderful ideas for new twists on classic salads like the Club House. Cobb and Caesar as well as a European flair on new ones. I keep referring back to it for tips on pickling cornichons or making cornbread croutons and I am dying to try out the bread recipes. The dressings use simple pure ingredients and are versatile and absolutely delicious This cookbook includes anecdotes from her life in France so It’s like having a culinary discussion with an old friend!

Excellent recipes- especially the soups.