Book Review: 350 Best Salads and Dressings by George Geary - Page 3

I will often buy cookbooks just to read them and look at the delicious photos, only later processing that they contain instructions one could use to make edible food. I might as well tell you, this is not one of those cookbooks. Three-hundred and fifty recipes, and only sixteen photos.

The group upon whom 350 Best Salads and Dressings will have the biggest impact are those who cannot imagine how a salad could be a filling, much less delicious, meal. Those who have never seen a salad spinner, would assume the words niçoise or Waldorf referred to the names of clothing designers, or couldn’t fathom putting meat on greens for a hearty dinner instead of throwing some veggies next to a hunk of beef will have their minds blown by even a cursory flip through this book.

On the other hand, those who have a working knowledge of the world of salads, perhaps even order salad as a main dish on occasion at a restaurant, or have ever scrounged through a nearly empty pantry to find some cheese, nuts, and fruit that could be thrown onto greens for lunch will be less amazed by 350 Best Salads and Dressings. If you are already someone who gets inventive with dinner salads, experimenting with different combinations of proteins, fruits, and veggies on lettuce or pasta, you may not really need this cookbook for recipes on a craft, salad-making, that is often intuitive if you have an idea about how flavors combine in food.

But then again, reading through the recipes once more as I write this, I have already picked out a dozen that I plan to make soon, which I would never have come up with on my own. In this sense, there are quite a few recipes in 350 Best Salads and Dressings that could take the salad skills of even a salad devotee to a whole new level.

Article Author: Kerri Shadid

Kerri Shadid has a multifaceted interest in people, in culture, and in art. She recently finished her Master's in Humanities and Social Thought at New York University. She has undergraduate degrees from the University of Oklahoma in Letters and Political …

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