A Salad For All Seasons
I thought I would do a quick book review of my latest cookery book, a Salad for all Seasons by Harry Eastwood.
I found this book in Waterstones, in the seasonal cookery section next to all the BBQ books, and instantly liked the look of it. You know when you pick up a recipe book and flick through the pictures you can immediately tell if you are going to like it.
I am a big fan of salads, especially the non-traditional ones, where there is more than just leaves. This book understands that, and presents some great recipes some of which really stretch the definition of salad.
My main dilemma came about purchasing it, at £20 it wasn’t wildly expensive but I made the mistake of checking Amazon first — at the time it was £12 on there. Now I usually try to support local companies and shops, but is Waterstones any better than Amazon? 60% better? In my indecision I put it on my Amazon wishlist and decided to deal with the issue later.
Roll on a few weeks and my lovely sister buys it from my wishlist as a birthday present, problem solved.
So far we have had two recipes from it, this week alone. The book is broken up into salad recipes for the four seasons, an idea I like, though we just picked what we fancied.
Orange and Yellow Spanish Salad:
This was fantastic, made up of cooked peppers, butter beans and chorizo it is very reminiscent of dry shakshuka (at least how we make it). The difference being it is served with wilted rocket (hence justifying it as a salad I guess). It really was an amazing dinner, one I suspect we will have again.
Peach and Mozzarella (with sweet chilli and tomato glaze):
This recipe is just as the title suggests, slices of peach with torn mozzarella and basil leaves, covered with a sweet chilli glaze. Our only modification to this was the addition of some croutons (we had a leftover ciabatta from earlier in the week which when baked with some olive oil and salt makes perfect croutons).
Both of these dishes, and the others in the book, are really colourful and vibrant making them really appealing. In cookery books what I tend to look for is pictures, nice big colour pictures that really sell the food, and this book has them in abundance. I really can’t wait to try more of the recipes to see if the rest of them live up to my newly formed expectations.
Cheers,
Olly
breadandbikes 