Salad for Dinner

A celebration of contrasts in color, flavor, and texture--an artfully prepared salad is one of the most appealing dishes to eat, engaging all the senses. It is a basic culinary fact but often overlooked: a salad packs the most flavor because the dressing coats every bite. And with the right combination, a salad can be a full meal in itself.

We all know it is healthier to eat more vegetables and whole grains. But how do you do so on a daily basis? This book reframes the question: Why not make greens the foundation of the plate? Smart, imaginative ideas abound: kale with lemon, parmesan, and almonds; Indonesian chicken salad with pineapple slaw; and salmon with quinoa, sorrel, and yogurt. There are super-hearty salads to satisfy even the biggest appetites, such as Korean barbecue beef salad; duck confit with fingerlings and frisee; and buttermilk fried chicken salad. These recipes help us break out of the "meat-and-three" box, leading to a new way of thinking about dinner.
Whether you're making a weeknight dinner for the family or a weekend party for a crowd, this is the book you'll reach for time and again. Salad for Dinner should be subtitled: gorgeous, satisfying, surprising meals you'll want all through the year.
--Dorie Greenspan, author of Around My French Table

"Jeanne's book is a brilliant new take on salads--smart, thoughtful and full of stunning flavor combinations."
--Kim Boyce, author of the James Beard Award-winning Good to the Grain

"Jeanne Kelley is not like you and me. Her real genius is in assemblage, the ability to transform a seemingly random plateful of vegetation into a composition perfectly evocative of the season, and the gift of Salad for Dinner is that it lets us do the same."
--Jonathan Gold, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for L.A. Weekly

"Jeanne Kelley shows you how to make a salad that will rock your dinner table. From growing your own to foraging greens, Kelley expands your salad horizons.
--Erik Knutzen, co-author of The Urban Homestead and Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post Consumer World

"Since southern California is one of the world's great salad bowls, both in terms of its superb produce and the cross-polinating ethnic variety of its population, you couldn't possibly find a better cook than Los Angeles-based Jeanne Kelley to help you discover its culinary bounty. She's also a serious but very charming writer, and this beautifully produced book should be sold with a spatter-guard, since it's one that will live in the kitchen.
--Alexander Lobrano, Saveur writer and author of Hungry for Paris

"Jeanne's homage to salads is wonderful. I love the clean, simple sophistication of the cookbook, and the recipes are innovative as well as informative. This book is like a salad 'bible, ' and will inspire you to cook, garden, entertain, and appreciate all the joys of living. This is no coffeetable book--it will stay in your kitchen at all times."
--Suzanne Tracht, Chef/Owner of Jar, Los Angeles, Top Chef Masters star, and Food and Wine Best New Chef.

The photos are lavish; the recipes are both imaginative and easy to follow.
--San Diego Magazine

...this is simply a book you really want to cook from. There is a fantastic glossary of greens that tells you about those market finds and what to do with it, followed by a primer on how to build a great salad.
--LA Weekly Blog