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Rating: 
Summary: Why go out for a fancy salad?
Review: Do you love ordering meal-sized salads at restaurants but never make them at home? Then this is the book you need to buy. The salads in this book are scrumptious and colorful. The interesting thing to me about this book is that it presents a couple of variations on each salad. For example one of the recipes in this book is Penne Pasta and Spinach with Oven-Roasted Plum Tomatoes, Toasted Walnuts, Curly Endive, and Cracked Black Pepper Vinaigrette. It has two variations, the grilled chicken breast variation and the pan-seared salmon variation. I would consider this book appropriate for someone with intermediate cooking skills but if you are a novice cook the instructions are excellent and would help you build your skill set.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for rainy-day cooking, NOT for beginners
Review: Marcel Desaulniers, author of some of the most wickedly good dessert cookbooks in my cupboard, releases a cookbook full of more virtuous dishes, probably for those of us who've indulged one time too many in his myriad chocolate desserts.One thing I particularly like about this book is the serving sizes. Unlike many cookbooks, where the number of servings listed is sometimes (or usually) optimistic, when a recipe in THIS book lists 4 servings, it means 4 VERY generous servings. Also, love or hate the ingredients that go into the salads, all of them turn out looking so delicious that it's (ironically) almost a shame to eat them. Be warned, however - I would NOT recommend this cookbook to beginners. It can take several hours to prepare one of these salads. When I purchased it, I was expecting dozens of recipes for salads consisting of 6 or 7 ingredients, tops, which you can toss together and serve with a dressing. Wrong. Many of these salad recipes are actually 2 to 4 small recipes combined into one dish (even more if you decide to compliment the salad with the extra "variation" recipes), and the number of different ingredients required for these recipes easily goes from 12-15. Also, many of these ingredients are not things casual cooks will have lying around the house (I have no idea where to find Moutarde de Meaux Pommery mustard), so you have to specifically be in the mood to make a certain salad - you can't just whip one of them together right when you come home from work. Rainy weekends are ideal for many of these recipes. One thing that I don't believe this book tells you (I may be mistaken), but which many people should guess anyway, is that all of the pasta recipes in this book can easily be substituted with the plain dry kind you buy in supermarkets. If the pasta is flavored (green onion fettucini, for example), you can simply add a bit of the herb/vegetable that was to go in the pasta directly into the salad. One minor quibble with this book is that compared to other books by this author, there doesn't seem to be as many recipes, perhaps because due to the fact that each salad recipe is composed of several smaller recipes. Most of these are quite good, and the dressing recipes can obviously be made on their own for every day salads. Also, a grilled lemon chicken breast recipe accompanying one of the pasta salad recipes makes an outstanding ciabatta sandwich. In the end, the recipe(s) that make up one salad can often be made on their own for any number of occasions, which is a major plus. Overall, the salad recipes as a whole are too difficult to make for me to recommend it to beginners, but cooking enthusiasts and/or people looking for substantial, nutritious meals should definitely give it a whirl!
Rating:
Summary: No little diet salads here...
Review: These are main-dish salads. Each recipe has several components to it, and two variations on top of that to top things off. One of my favorite recipes in this book is "Sliced Beets with Curly Endive, Red Bliss Potato Salad, Honey Mustard Roasted Walnuts, and Meaux Mustard Vinaigrette." I'm not normally fond of beets, but they're fantastic in this recipe. The honey mustard roasted walnuts have the perfect blend of sharp and sweet tastes. There are a couple of ingredients you might have trouble finding, but they're generally things you can easily substitute for. The first variation for this recipe is the Walnut-Crusted Striped Bass, and there's also a Honey Duck Stir-Fry variation. Each recipe has the same "Chef's Touch" section as in "Death by Chocolate," giving suggestions for substitution (the aforementioned mustard), storage, and so on, including even wine suggestions in some cases. My only negative comment on this recipe was that the vinaigrette was too oily for our taste, but it's easy enough to reduce the amount of oil. Each recipe serves four hungry people, and could easily be stretched to 6 or 8 as a side dish.
If you're familiar with Desaulniers' "Death by Chocolate" series, then you're already familiar with his cookbook style. He describes everything in detail, not because it's necessarily complex, but because he wants to make sure he doesn't leave anything out or confuse the reader. Also, while his recipes are usually calculated to be not overly difficult, they do tend to be time-consuming, and often involve a handful of different components that need to be put together. You don't need to be an expert to use his cookbooks, but you do need to be willing to spend time and effort in the kitchen. But as always, he truly comes through in the flavor department. Peppered Honey Peaches with Warm Pecan Cakes, "Bitter" Salad Greens, and Sour Mash Vinaigrette. Variations: Turkey Scallopine with Basil and Zinfandel; Pecan-Crusted Soft-Shell Crab. Or maybe you'd prefer Mandarin Orange Basmati Rice with Sesame Stir-Fried Vegetables, Tangy Red Cabbage, and Szechuan Peppercorn Vinaigrette. Variations: Orange and Cilantro Barbecued Catfish; Charred Flank Steak. Truly, there's something in here to appeal to almost anyone.
Rating:
Summary: No little diet salads here...
Review: These are main-dish salads. Each recipe has several components to it, and two variations on top of that to top things off. One of my favorite recipes in this book is "Sliced Beets with Curly Endive, Red Bliss Potato Salad, Honey Mustard Roasted Walnuts, and Meaux Mustard Vinaigrette." I'm not normally fond of beets, but they're fantastic in this recipe. The honey mustard roasted walnuts have the perfect blend of sharp and sweet tastes. There are a couple of ingredients you might have trouble finding, but they're generally things you can easily substitute for. The first variation for this recipe is the Walnut-Crusted Striped Bass, and there's also a Honey Duck Stir-Fry variation. Each recipe has the same "Chef's Touch" section as in "Death by Chocolate," giving suggestions for substitution (the aforementioned mustard), storage, and so on, including even wine suggestions in some cases. My only negative comment on this recipe was that the vinaigrette was too oily for our taste, but it's easy enough to reduce the amount of oil. Each recipe serves four hungry people, and could easily be stretched to 6 or 8 as a side dish.
If you're familiar with Desaulniers' "Death by Chocolate" series, then you're already familiar with his cookbook style. He describes everything in detail, not because it's necessarily complex, but because he wants to make sure he doesn't leave anything out or confuse the reader. Also, while his recipes are usually calculated to be not overly difficult, they do tend to be time-consuming, and often involve a handful of different components that need to be put together. You don't need to be an expert to use his cookbooks, but you do need to be willing to spend time and effort in the kitchen. But as always, he truly comes through in the flavor department. Peppered Honey Peaches with Warm Pecan Cakes, "Bitter" Salad Greens, and Sour Mash Vinaigrette. Variations: Turkey Scallopine with Basil and Zinfandel; Pecan-Crusted Soft-Shell Crab. Or maybe you'd prefer Mandarin Orange Basmati Rice with Sesame Stir-Fried Vegetables, Tangy Red Cabbage, and Szechuan Peppercorn Vinaigrette. Variations: Orange and Cilantro Barbecued Catfish; Charred Flank Steak. Truly, there's something in here to appeal to almost anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Salad extravanganza for many days!
Review: This is just a marvelous example of the chef who is inventive and researches the items and prep with the at-home type cook in mind. He presents very original, creative salad entrees with a huge array of ingredients, e.g. nuts, berries, fish, fowl, beef, etc. but then adds item options as well as prep and presentation advice along with two additions to the basic salad recipe if so inclined. The possibilities are endless! So good to those of us who enjoy just a great salad as the meal! Marcel is one of the best cookbook producers around .... from chocholate to burgers to salads.
Rating:
Summary: Salad extravanganza for many days!
Review: This is just a marvelous example of the chef who is inventive and researches the items and prep with the at-home type cook in mind. He presents very original, creative salad entrees with a huge array of ingredients, e.g. nuts, berries, fish, fowl, beef, etc. but then adds item options as well as prep and presentation advice along with two additions to the basic salad recipe if so inclined. The possibilities are endless! So good to those of us who enjoy just a great salad as the meal! Marcel is one of the best cookbook producers around .... from chocholate to burgers to salads.
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