If you are a dedicated veggie lover, you know the experience all too well. You go to a restaurant with your friends and while they salivate over their steaks, you have to make do with drooping lettuce and gluey tomatoes.
The author, award-winning cook-booker Terry Hope Romero, went through this scenario many times as a “teen vegetarian (and later, adult vegan),” often concluding, “salads just sucked.” Luckily for us, we do not have to repeat her discouragement. It's time to cut through the crabmeat and become a "salad samurai"--master of your own veggie destiny (think John Belushi on
SNL).
This colorful coffee table or kitchen counter style guide allows you to conquer the salad doldrums, experiment, and turn your palate back on to the salad station. Primarily a recipe collection, the names of potential edibles are as appetizing as the photos: Pepperoni Tempeh Pizza Salad for the Italian food lover, Collards and Sweet Potato Crunch Bowl for those vegans south of the Mason-Dixon line, Grilled Miso Apples and Brussels Sprouts Salad for the sophisticated urbanite, or for the purely exotic palate, how about Avocado Amaranth Bhel Puri Chaat.
In addition to offering salad dressing concoctions amazing in their variety, Romero has deftly divided her salad selections by season, which will help the truly dedicated farmer’s market shopper: strawberries and spinach in the spring, chickpeas and barbecue for summer, figs and tempeh in the fall, couscous with lemon and olives in the winter. The book is graphically sharp and stylish; you will enjoy showing it off to your salad-loving guests.
And yes, there are fruity dessert salads, with my favorite (by the very look of it): Overnight Oats with Mexican Chocolate Crème.
Salad Samurai was designed with veg devotees in mind, but it will be no surprise if it garners new converts to tofu and tarragon. It's part of the excellent Da Capo Lifelong series of books to keep and use perennially.