Salad Freak: Recipes to Feed a Healthy Obsession

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The book opens with a citrus and avocado salad dotted with tiny pink radishes, a salad that could brighten even the darkest of winter days. I feel like I’ve always had a filing cabinet of flavors in my brain and it happens like a musician knows all the notes and can make music with it,” she says. The recipes are, on the whole, quite bougie with a number of expensive ingredients/just written in a way that feels a little inaccessible, which is frankly exactly what I expected based on the description. I love fruit but putting 3 melons and some type of dairy product on a plate doesn’t sound good AND doesn’t feel like a salad?

Salad Freak: Recipes to Feed a Healthy Obsession

By playfully combining color, texture, shape, and, of course, flavor, Damuck demonstrates how a little extra effort in the kitchen can be meditative, delicious, and fun.Sprinkle with a bit of salt and pepper, and cook until the edges are nice and crispy brown and the whites are completely opaque, two to three minutes. The instructions for roasting the squash resulted in very browned slices - delicious but less attractive than the photo. I took this cookbook out of the local library after seeing it recommended on a local IG feed I had followed for quite some time.

Salad Freak: Recipes to Feed a Healthy Obsession - Eat Your Books Salad Freak: Recipes to Feed a Healthy Obsession - Eat Your Books

I especially appreciated the latter, which helps me with my recipe testing photos and with taking food photos for work (I have some in our latest cover story! I think I just want to deconstruct the dish and make it in a way that feels like every ingredient is shining. The photography and design are gorgeous and just invites you to get in the kitchen and start preparing. I didn't make the chili crisp, but used some of the "Everything oil" from To Asia, With Love, and it tasted great with the rest of the recipe.

Damuck takes umbrage at the trend in food media toward hacks and shortcuts and believes we should lose ourselves in the mundane tasks of rinsing a carrot or dicing an onion. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.

Salad Freak - Digital Library of Illinois - OverDrive Salad Freak - Digital Library of Illinois - OverDrive

I really loved what Jess had to say in the opening of the book; about being present in the process of preparing your food, not just looking for the next hack.Unless you get to the farmers market at 7 o’clock in the morning, you can’t get your hands on that specialty pink radicchio,” she says. From edible plants to flowers, there are a handful of plants that can help prevent diseases, deter pests, and provide shade for nearby company.

Salad Game, According to America’s Favorite How to Up Your Salad Game, According to America’s Favorite

Damuck has also worked at Bon Appétit, Food Network, Apartment Therapy, and Vox Creative, and has produced thousands of food-related web videos for clients. I recommend reading through this recipe first to see how each component should be prepped, and what kitchen tools you’ll need. It was only when she arrived in California, and befriended her neighbors by offering them the leftovers from the recipe-testing sessions for her cookbook, that she really began to hang out with more people outside the foodie world. Other details that only take a second but make a world of difference are having plenty of fresh herbs on hand to garnish and add freshness, and swooshing a bit of dressing around the side of the bowl. I give up on achieving Instagram-ready perfection and add my chard, eggs, and honeyed chili oil on top.

Yet another recipe blogger/content creator book, jammed with anecdotes about how they stayed at their friend Stanford's cottage on Martha's Vineyard ("we took a water taxi, natch") and discovered this divine recipe for quail salad. This bright Citrus Breakfast Salad with Spicy Chile Granola combines blood oranges, Cara Caras, and satsuma mandarins. We chatted with Damuck about the two Passover salad recipes she shared with us—one actually didn’t make it into the book!