A salad for every occasion

It sounds simple- toss a few ingredients together, dress it with a perfect emulsion and voila, you have yourself a delicious bowl of salad. But perfectionists who have dabbled with this course of the meal will know that making a good salad is no easy feat.

It requires pairing the right kind of meat with rightly textured vegetables or two veggies together. It calls for a perfectly consistent dressing and creating textural contrasts. But, arm yourself with journalist Sunita Wadekar Bhargava's newly released cookbook, Only Salads, and you don't have to worry about getting the nitty-gritty right.
Divided into multiple sections, the book has over 40 recipes separated on the basis of being summer friendly, quick to make, low fat and so on. While some of these are humdrum like a mayo-drenched potato salad or sprouted moong tossed with lime juice and green chillies, some recipes satisfy even the most eager epicurean.

Take, for instance, the jicama (Mexican yam) salad which uses the turnip-like vegetable as base and mixes it along with other veggies to create a unique tasting bowl. Or the pear and rocket salad tossed in a honey-mustard dressing that offers a new flavour profile.

One of the drawbacks of this book is the inconsistency in recipe writing. While the directions are clear, not all the recipes have a separate ingredient list (for dressing) which can be cumbersome to spot in the midst of cooking.
We were displeased with the recipe of the Mexican bean salad whose dressing is a mixture of tomato pulp, lemon juice and seasoning. It's known that Indian tomatoes are especially tart, so a balancing agent like a nutty oil should have been added. Plus, the taste of raw tomato in pureed form isn't appetizing at all.

On the upside, our favourite from the catalogue is 'salad on the side' section. The segment has several recipes that can be swapped to create a mini meal on a hot, summery afternoon. The Asian soy-peanut noodle salad and the slow-roasted tomatoes with garlic and oregano are winners in the way the flavours have been put together. Ditto for the bitter gourd and onion and confetti rice salad, which looks stunning if the representational images are to be believed.

Overall, Only Salads is a light-hearted cookbook that doesn't seep deep into the fine art of salad making. But it can be a handy tool if throwing lunch and dinner soirees are your idea of fun.
sonal.ved@dnaindia.net, @dna

Moroccan veg salad
Ingredients: 15 Madras onions, 2 red bell peppers, 1 big aubergine, 3 carrots, 4 tomatoes, 1 sweet potato
Dressing: 3-4 cloves of garlic, 30 ml olive oil, 5 ml lime juice, 10 ml cream, 1/2 cup coriander leaves, a few sprigs of mint leaves, crushed black pepper to taste
Garnish: 3-4 lettuce leaves

Method: Dice the vegetables into neat cubes. Pour one teaspoon olive oil in a bowl, add a flake of crushed garlic, a pinch of salt and pepper to taste. Blend the vegetables in this mixture. Keep aside for 10 minutes. Heat the grill and season it with oil. Grill the vegetables on it till cooked. Take care not to covercook them or they will lose their texture and colour. For the dressing, chop garlic, coriander and mint leaves. Add the remaining olive oil, cream, lime juice, salt and black pepper to it. Mix well. Add the grilled vegetables to the dressing and toss well. Garnish with fresh lettuce leaves. Serve hot.