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Mixt Salads: A Chef's Bold Creations [A Cookbook]
Dare to get more out of your greens!
From healthy, superfood packed entrée salads to indulgent affairs featuring premium ingredients, this bold collection of more than 60 recipes for voracious omnivores and vivacious salad lovers features unusual and dynamic ingredient pairings that take salads to a whole new level.
In Mixt Salads, the co-founder and executive chef of San Francisco’s beloved boutique salad joints shares his inventive, flavor-forward creations. Blending all of the best trends in healthy, mindful eating—seasonal, locally grown, modest portions but big flavor—Swallow develops each entrée salad as if he were in the kitchen of a fine dining restaurant. With his penchant for innovative constructions and unabashed flavor, he reinvents the salad with playful yet elegant offerings such as:
Porky mixed greens with pork tenderloin, roasted butternut squash, and port reduction
Donald duck confit with persimmons and blue cheeses
Burger ground Kobe with grilled onion
Lobster Boat poached lobster with golden beets
Swallow teaches you how to create fresh, delicious, and addictive salads that take center stage as the entire meal, breaking free of side-dish status. Starting from scratch, he walks you through his salad-building essentials and highlights produce availability so that you can create your own imaginative masterpieces year round.
From healthy, superfood packed entrée salads to indulgent affairs featuring premium ingredients, this bold collection of more than 60 recipes for voracious omnivores and vivacious salad lovers features unusual and dynamic ingredient pairings that take salads to a whole new level.
In Mixt Salads, the co-founder and executive chef of San Francisco’s beloved boutique salad joints shares his inventive, flavor-forward creations. Blending all of the best trends in healthy, mindful eating—seasonal, locally grown, modest portions but big flavor—Swallow develops each entrée salad as if he were in the kitchen of a fine dining restaurant. With his penchant for innovative constructions and unabashed flavor, he reinvents the salad with playful yet elegant offerings such as:
Porky mixed greens with pork tenderloin, roasted butternut squash, and port reduction
Donald duck confit with persimmons and blue cheeses
Burger ground Kobe with grilled onion
Lobster Boat poached lobster with golden beets
Swallow teaches you how to create fresh, delicious, and addictive salads that take center stage as the entire meal, breaking free of side-dish status. Starting from scratch, he walks you through his salad-building essentials and highlights produce availability so that you can create your own imaginative masterpieces year round.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published April 27, 2010
16 people are currently reading
32 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 29, 2018
DNF. Read 15% before getting completely fed up with the utter arrogance of the tone, then leafed through the rest to see if it was worth trying to finish. I think this is the first time I've ever returned a book. I know it's the first time I've ever requested a refund for a cookbook, but the thing is just insufferable.
The longer I'm away from California, the more I realize how out-of-touch with the rest of the country and how arrogant the food scene there is. Yes, there are some wonderful restaurants in the area and astonishing access to a huge variety of ingredients. The problem is that the cookbook is useless outside that kind of market. Unless you live in the Bay Area (or somewhere similar) and have an infinite grocery budget, this book is going to be little more than a lot of pretty pictures and some preachy manifestos about "rules for a sustainable kitchen" or where you should shop. (Whole Foods must be a sponsor given the number of times they are mentioned.) Most of us don't have groceries nearby that carry yuzu or twenty kinds of vinegar. Heck, I got excited when our grocery carries eggplant and fresh basil.
Mostly though, I just hated the author's tone. I really don't give a fig that he snowboards at Lake Tahoe or how he thinks only wooden utensils are fit to touch food. (I swat at him with my silicone spatula.)
_________________
DNF Disclaimer: Usually I don't affix a star rating to books on my DNF/abandoned list. That said, I make exceptions to my own rule if I feel any or all of the following is applicable:
A) I've gotten more than 25% of the way through the book (which is far more than enough for something to prove its value.)
B) I find the content or writing especially inane, insufferable, or just plain old dull,
C) Something about either the content or author's POV just annoyed the hell out of me.
________________
The longer I'm away from California, the more I realize how out-of-touch with the rest of the country and how arrogant the food scene there is. Yes, there are some wonderful restaurants in the area and astonishing access to a huge variety of ingredients. The problem is that the cookbook is useless outside that kind of market. Unless you live in the Bay Area (or somewhere similar) and have an infinite grocery budget, this book is going to be little more than a lot of pretty pictures and some preachy manifestos about "rules for a sustainable kitchen" or where you should shop. (Whole Foods must be a sponsor given the number of times they are mentioned.) Most of us don't have groceries nearby that carry yuzu or twenty kinds of vinegar. Heck, I got excited when our grocery carries eggplant and fresh basil.
Mostly though, I just hated the author's tone. I really don't give a fig that he snowboards at Lake Tahoe or how he thinks only wooden utensils are fit to touch food. (I swat at him with my silicone spatula.)
_________________
DNF Disclaimer: Usually I don't affix a star rating to books on my DNF/abandoned list. That said, I make exceptions to my own rule if I feel any or all of the following is applicable:
A) I've gotten more than 25% of the way through the book (which is far more than enough for something to prove its value.)
B) I find the content or writing especially inane, insufferable, or just plain old dull,
C) Something about either the content or author's POV just annoyed the hell out of me.
________________
August 8, 2017
Change up your boring salads!
Great book to help you reinvent your salads. Creative spins on traditional salads and ferric ideas for main dish salads. Also great salad dressing g recipes which is why I bought this book.
Great book to help you reinvent your salads. Creative spins on traditional salads and ferric ideas for main dish salads. Also great salad dressing g recipes which is why I bought this book.
July 29, 2018
I found about four recipes I really liked. Otherwise, they were too complicated for the average person!
April 29, 2024
I… what? This is odd.
In a recent development, I can now eat some raw vegetables (mostly the ones I’m already eating cooked, and also a little bit of lettuce. It’s a big deal!). I have a short stack of salad-centric “cook”books, mostly because I need dressing recipes— I still can’t have citrus, so most basic recipes are out, and there is a single salad dressing available in town that isn’t based on dairy, canola, or soy (and, sadly, it’s not very good). So: salad books!
There’s an emphasis on fresh herbs, which seems lovely, but I honestly struggle to find enough basil sometimes, never mind these others. I don’t know if that’s a real knock against the book or if the author just never considered a readership without his level of access to fresh foods.
Maybe this is just how things are in the big city of San Francisco? I’ve read a lot of cookbooks over the past few years, and this still had ingredients I’d never seen before (just 2, but still). I kind of wrote the book off as purposefully-froo-froo with the stacked salad: a salad that’s instructed to be served as full lettuce leaves stacked in a short stack like pancakes. It’s not a finger food or designed to be rolled up or something. That would be so annoying to eat!
A lot of the recipes are “technically” salad in that they’re mixed vegetables (some cooked), or mixed fruits like a fruit salad (but served in a weird layout), or just uncooked vegetables (do we really need a recipe for sliced tomatoes with oil and salt?). Not all recipes have a photo, and when there is a photo, more than half the time it’s not even of the dish— it’s the face of a goat, or rows of basil at a farm, or a block of cheese or something: honestly, they look like stock images. This guy can serve whatever he wants at his restaurant, but putting a beef patty slider on top of a single lettuce leaf instead of a bun doesn’t really make it a salad.
I did write down a few dressing recipes that I could use with no substitutions, but, like 3. The author’s self importance and high estimation of his own culinary genius comes through more strongly than anything else.
Edited to include cross-references: Food52 Mighty Salads: 60 New Ways to Turn Salad into Dinner A Cookbook
In a recent development, I can now eat some raw vegetables (mostly the ones I’m already eating cooked, and also a little bit of lettuce. It’s a big deal!). I have a short stack of salad-centric “cook”books, mostly because I need dressing recipes— I still can’t have citrus, so most basic recipes are out, and there is a single salad dressing available in town that isn’t based on dairy, canola, or soy (and, sadly, it’s not very good). So: salad books!
There’s an emphasis on fresh herbs, which seems lovely, but I honestly struggle to find enough basil sometimes, never mind these others. I don’t know if that’s a real knock against the book or if the author just never considered a readership without his level of access to fresh foods.
Maybe this is just how things are in the big city of San Francisco? I’ve read a lot of cookbooks over the past few years, and this still had ingredients I’d never seen before (just 2, but still). I kind of wrote the book off as purposefully-froo-froo with the stacked salad: a salad that’s instructed to be served as full lettuce leaves stacked in a short stack like pancakes. It’s not a finger food or designed to be rolled up or something. That would be so annoying to eat!
A lot of the recipes are “technically” salad in that they’re mixed vegetables (some cooked), or mixed fruits like a fruit salad (but served in a weird layout), or just uncooked vegetables (do we really need a recipe for sliced tomatoes with oil and salt?). Not all recipes have a photo, and when there is a photo, more than half the time it’s not even of the dish— it’s the face of a goat, or rows of basil at a farm, or a block of cheese or something: honestly, they look like stock images. This guy can serve whatever he wants at his restaurant, but putting a beef patty slider on top of a single lettuce leaf instead of a bun doesn’t really make it a salad.
I did write down a few dressing recipes that I could use with no substitutions, but, like 3. The author’s self importance and high estimation of his own culinary genius comes through more strongly than anything else.
Edited to include cross-references: Food52 Mighty Salads: 60 New Ways to Turn Salad into Dinner A Cookbook
May 11, 2011
a little more foodie than I am, but yummy to read.
March 27, 2017
Great ideas
I admit, the first time through I skimmed it and thought 'meh' but on the second read I loved it. Takes salad far beyond the 'bagged greens and bottled dressing' but not in the 'Portlandia style vegan' direction. There's salad that involves steak and potatoes, one that uses mini hamburger, some that involve fruit or tomatoes or a combo of both, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Definitely inspiring!
I admit, the first time through I skimmed it and thought 'meh' but on the second read I loved it. Takes salad far beyond the 'bagged greens and bottled dressing' but not in the 'Portlandia style vegan' direction. There's salad that involves steak and potatoes, one that uses mini hamburger, some that involve fruit or tomatoes or a combo of both, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Definitely inspiring!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews