Every now and then I like a salad with attitude. This one has it, with its mix of assertive, crunchy radicchio, pungent anchovy-lemon dressing, and crispy croutons. Serve it with a rich main course such as Vegetable-Stuffed Pasta Shells or Crêpe Cannelloni with Mushrooms and Zucchini.
This salad says summer and is a foil for the steak. It is a simplified version of one I ate recently in Spain.
Combining carrots and oranges, seasoned with orange flower water and cinnamon, is a frequently served favorite in Morocco. The salad should be just moist enough to need a spoon to eat it. The key to this dish is grating the carrots very finely so that they can absorb the orange juice and soften slightly. For a version with more texture, add a few pieces of chopped orange segments, or grate the oranges instead of juicing them.
This egg salad supposedly originated with a chef who cooked for European royalty before a stint at the National Casino in Budapest, Hungary. Odds are you won’t find this delicious dish on any Las Vegas or Atlantic City menu, but it is a sure bet for lunch or at the dinner hour. Butter and sour cream lend a rich foundation, but it’s still lighter than a typical mayonnaise-based egg salad. And the anchovies add a hint of salt and briny depth. This is terrific served with lettuce and fresh vegetables as a salad, or with lettuce and tomato on toast as a sandwich.
Actually, this was created by Gill's friend Jane, but it comes to us via Gill, so we're putting her name on it. It's a salad that uses up the kinds of things you find in the refrigerator during the summer.
In Italy, whenever you walk into a store that sells salumi or prepared foods, you will inevitably see some kind of rice salad. It's as ubiquitous as coleslaw is in delis here, and these rice salads can be just as unimpressive—often a half-hearted mix of canned corn, sliced olives, lackluster ham, vegetables, and rice. Still, we've always liked the idea of a rice salad and so decided to come up with a fresher, livelier version, using summer vegetables at their peak—sweet corn, ripe cherry tomatoes, spice radishes, cucumbers, and scallions, with herbs and caciocavallo cheese for complexity. But the biggest departure from the Italian standard is that instead of using the traditional white rice, we toss the vegetables with red rice from the Piedmont region. Red has a much deeper, earthier flavor than white rice and a firmer texture. If you can't find it, try using faro rather than substitution white or brown rice.
This is such a wonderfully fresh salad, full of different tastes and textures: charred, spicy, herbal, naturally acidic, and crisp. I love to serve this as a palate-cleansing salad course.
This slaw takes off on a cabbage-onion-chile salad dressed with Mexican crema and lime that a Mexican neighbor used to make. It is delicious alongside anything grilled or frankly, tucked into a soft corn tortilla all on its own.
The Spice Blend
Fresh summer greens and bits of sweet red pepper dot rice the color of a sunset -- this is one good-looking salad to bring to the table, or to pack away for a picnic. In fact, I first tasted it when a Spanish friend brought it to one of our "Shakespeare in the Park" picnics in New York. It's indestructible enough to go almost anywhere.