A NEW SALAD MANIFESTO (OR, STOP MAKING SALADS THAT SUCK)
“But there’s always the salad.”
If you don’t eat meat (or any animal-derived food), ordering a meal in a nice, if not necessarily accommodating to a vegan palate, restaurant usually drifts to the inevitable rendezvous with a salad. Everyone tucks into steak and potato-flavored mounds of butter. You, however, poke your fork into a morose pile of limp leaves. As a teen vegetarian (and later, adult vegan), countless experiences like this one soured me on ever loving salad. Or actively seeking it out as a meal. Salads just sucked.
But a few cookbooks and decades later, my appetite has shifted increasingly away from cupcakes and casseroles to smoothies, soups, and yes . . . salad. But not the pale mounds of iceberg lathered in bottled dressing or its modern “upscale” accomplice: the pile of tasteless “spring” baby greens glistening in sugary, one-note “balsamic” dreck.
The real salads I crave and eat on a daily basis are hearty, genuine meals! They are true one-bowl wonders, beautiful unions of crunchy fresh vegetables and often fruit, that are always loaded with hearty plant-based proteins, freshly made dressings, and crunchy toppings that gild something much tastier than a lily. Best part yet: something that tastes this good doesn’t even take long to make. Prepare a batch of dressing, chop some veggies, and pack it all up for memorable meals throughout the week.
If you opened this book looking for quiet, demure side salads, I’m afraid you’re outnumbered (or just turn to page 30 for no-brainer suggestions for side dishes). These are generously proportioned entrée salads for big appetites! You may even need to buy a few new big bowls to contain these megasalads; no need to unpack the little plates and dainty salad forks.
Why Salad Samurai? Because you are the salad samurai, master of your salad-making domain! Don’t worry, you’re not required to live by some kind of vegetable bushido code. The only thing that we (as in all the vegans, vegetarians, and even omnivores in favor of meatless meals) must do is rescue salads from their sucktastic reputation as wimpy fare. These are salads to fight over!