Lettuce in Your Kitchen: 100 Innovative Salads and 100 Versatile Dressings

In Lettuce in Your Kitchen, Chris Schlesinger and John "Doc" Willoughby toss the traditional meal of meat-starch-vegetables into a mountain of greens, full of great textures and new flavors, turning on its head forever our old-fashioned notion of the perfect one-dish meal.
Here are salads for every appetite: big salads to satisfy a dinner crowd like Baby Asian Greens with Ginger-Rubbed Chicken and Apricots; fancy salads like Arugula with Sauteed Softshell Crabs and Toast Points for a dressier occasion; and purely vegetable salads like Spinach Salad with Peppers, Eggplant, and Roasted Garlic for absolutely every day.
Chris and Doc's 100 dressings are astoundingly versatile (ginger-soy, curry-lime, sweet-sour bacon, and charred tomato, to name a few) and do double duty as dips for grilled breads or raw vegetables, drizzled on baked potatoes, or brushed on grilled fish or roast chicken.
Simple additions bring new depths of flavor to your salads: watercress, purslane, and parsley, with their mild, slightly grassy flavors, are high on the list of great greens. The authors show how "cooking greens" - like kale, collard, turnip, and mustard greens - in their baby state add intensity to a salad. To make your life even easier, each recipe suggests substitute greens.
This complete salad companion contains all the soon-to-be-cherished tips on salad making, including how to resuscitate wilted greens and how to roast garlic to perfection. Most of all, it tells you how to create salads that are simple to prepare, complex in presentation, and always special in taste.

Schlesinger and Willoughby (The Thrill of the Grill) dazzle with this array of salads and dressings varied in texture, color and flavor. There are simple salads with few ingredients (Cary's Leaf Lettuce Salad with Orange, Fennel and Red Onion, tossed with a briny green olive dressing) and fancy salads featuring special-occasion ingredients such as lobster, shiitakes or foie gras. Unexpected combinations occur in Oak Leaf Lettuce with Grilled Sweet Potatoes and Asparagus, served with cashews and an orange-dill-sour cream dressing, or Mixed Cabbage Salad with Poached Shrimp and Hearts of Palm and a dressing made with avocado, cilantro, cumin seeds and lime. Beginning chapters include a glossary of 25 greens, another glossary for general-use ingredients and a guide to choosing, cleaning and substituting greens. Chapters range from Salads for the Perfect Tomato through Main Course Salads to Salads for a Crowd. Substitute greens are suggested for each recipe, as are additional uses for the dressing. Although it wouldn't work for a title, the authors spin a thrill into salads too, transforming a usually familiar course into an inventive, unexpected eating experience.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

With summer approaching, this collection of salads from the authors of The Thrill of the Grill (LJ 6/15/90) is particularly timely, but its appeal shouldn't be limited to just peak produce season. There are Salads with Exotic Flavors, Fancy Salads, even Salads for the Perfect Tomato; some are side dishes or appetizers; others are substantial enough for an entree. Many of the dressings could serve as sauces for other dishes; the authors offer lots of ideas in the recipe headnotes. Mediterranean, Asian, and Latin American flavors abound in these lively dishes. For most collections.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

All kidding aside, lettuce is good for you. Schlesinger and Willoughby's approach is one-stop shopping; each of their more than 100 recipes for salads is paired with a dressing, successfully eliminating guesswork in that regard. They heartily advocate the use of substitutes; every concoction suggests alternative components. A vegetable salad to them might see red leaf lettuce mixed with grilled figs and baby artichokes. A chef's salad featuring arugula, red snapper ceviche, and papaya rivals any main meal. Barbara Jacobs