WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS MORE SALAD! (and maybe my book of salads?)

You might be surprised to learn that I don’t only write books full of letters mostly to dead guys and women of letters. Here comes a proposal for Nonna the Queen of Salads titled by my two granddaughters.

Nonna the Queen of Salads

By Diane Joy Charney

 

Short Description

This book will provide more than 50 original salad recipes based on improvising with the freshest ingredients you happen to have available. The recipes will be interspersed with humorous essays about the adventures of the author—a retired Yale professor—as an expat living in Europe. 

From the misadventure of “How hitting your bumper while backing up into just one ivy-covered stone wall can put a damper on your day” to “How NOT to harvest 2119 pounds of olives: Don’t duct-tape a plastic rake head to the end of a long pole,” each mini-essay will complement the featured salads. I would be happy to provide sample stories (two are in the links above). The result will be a cookbook that’s fun to read, inspiring, and packed with beautiful photographs.  

I approach making salads like an artist assembling a painting, using the right bowl as a canvas. I find that putting together the perfect salad can be a mindful, Zen-like experience. I’ve never encountered anyone who has the same approach. I’d love to share my joy in making unique, delicious, artistic salads with readers who love to express their creativity while producing healthy food that is in harmony with the seasons and tailored to the tastes and diets of family and guests. 

 

About the Author

While continuously making delicious, artful salads, Diane Joy Charney was teaching French and Creative Writing at Yale University for 33 years. She has lived, studied, and taught in France. But when not in Connecticut, she lives much of the year in the Italian countryside, where the food and fresh air are significantly better than the roads and garbage disposals. She writes about her experiences as an expat in her blog, “In Love With France, At Home In Italy” and is the author of Letters to Men and Women of Letters, a literary memoir.

A lifelong musician (piano, flute, viola), she is also passionate about yoga, growing her own food, and tap dancing. A recent birthday card that her young granddaughters made for her was addressed to “Nonna the Queen of Salads.” The card features a game between battling broccoli and carrots. This inspired the title of the book proposed here. Charney is not a professional chef but represents many readers: an enthusiastic home cook who likes to provide fresh, healthy, delicious meals for friends and family.

 

Recipes, Pictures

I have a catalogue of, last I checked, 327 salads, with more being developed every week. I photograph each salad to remind myself of what ingredients would be fun to combine next. I would aim for around 75 recipes for the book, plus interspersed humorous essays about food, travel, and life as a Nonna (Italian for “grandmother”) in Europe.

            

Sample Recipe

SUPER SPEEDY SALAD LUNCH: SALAD ART FROM SIMPLE INGREDIENTS

 

The beauty of this recipe is its flexibility. I love the challenge of working with what I have. And with a house full of company, I appreciate always having ingredients on hand and in the garden that I can turn into a mouthwatering salad without worrying about having to make a special trip to the store.

In thinking about the recipes and restaurants that excite me the most—like the complex creations of true masters like Yotam Ottolenghi—I realize that I almost never make them myself. Why? Because they tend to require exotic, hard-to-find ingredients that are part of their “wow” factor, but which discourage me from trying them. 

I come from a family that specializes in the art of the “workaround.” I like to improvise and figure out creative solutions that don’t involve last-minute shopping trips. Here’s one that I use often as the core from which I can take the salad in various directions. My recipes are intentionally flexible. There are a lot of “if not this, then try this,” which is part of my salad philosophy: use what you like, what is freshest, and what is available.

 

INGREDIENTS

Carrots

Radishes

Tomatoes

Onions (red, white, yellow, scallions, or the green tops of homegrown onions fresh from the           garden)

Lettuce of any type and/or Belgian endive

Cucumber

Feta cheese

Cooked beets

Artichoke hearts

Olives

Lentils (or any canned beans)

Salami and Mortadella slices, rolled (or any other sandwich meat you have on hand)

Zested orange peel for flavor, color and decoration—*Optional: a zester is one of the few “gourmet” tools I use regularly. It makes colorful swirls of flavor that POPS without extra expense or calories

Orange (or any type of citrus) sections and their juice

Garden herbs, if available (mint, parsley, rosemary, basil, thyme, sage—during much of the year my vegetable garden is full of them) or dried herbs

 

DIRECTIONS

For most salads, I like to use a large, low, rectangular Pyrex glass dish that will show off the vibrant colors, shapes, and textures of the ingredients.

 

YOU ARE THE DESIGNER AND THE ARTIST!

Compose the layered salad from the bottom up by starting with the lettuce or whatever greens you’re using. No lettuce? No problem! Carrots tend to be available year-round. I like to borrow from the French tradition of crudités, which sounds more elegant than what it is: a pile of grated raw vegetables.

Surrounded by canned artichoke hearts, they can become the centerpiece for a colorful salad.

In the fall and winter months, cylindrical Belgian endives, in white or red, are a wonderful substitute or supplement to other greens. They tend to be a surprise ingredient—a well-loved yet long-lasting element of a salad that adds crunch and mystery. Fascinated guests enjoy trying to figure out what it might be. In a pinch, quickly sliced cucumbers can substitute for greens or be used to decorate around the edges of the salad.

I grow many of my own vegetables, but the beets that I always have in my pantry “grow” in the aisle of my local grocer. Already cooked, they are extremely long lasting and stand ready to be sliced into a size and shape of your choice on a moment’s notice.

Beets and any member of the citrus family (juicy tangerine or grapefruit sections, zested peel, and juice) go perfectly with beets. I like to tuck pieces in between beet slices, sprinkling the juice and zest over them. Then top them and the whole salad with fresh or dried herbs, and crumbled feta.

Do you have guests who don’t eat tomatoes? Radishes are a great substitute to add color and crunch. Decorative tomatoes and rolled slices of meat can be easily moved aside by those who wish to avoid them. For both practical and decorative purposes, it’s a good idea to keep such ingredients around the outer edges of the container, where they can be seen and speared or avoided, as necessary.

But where’s the satisfying protein? A can of lentils, chickpeas, black beans, or cannellini beans can do nicely. I like to drain and spread them along the outer edges of the dish. Roll the cold cuts and arrange them around the outer edge.

Voilà! The pictured version of this salad is only a suggestion. Feel free to experiment and be your own salad artist! 

*

Where’s the picture of the sample salad described here? I see that back in 2020 my camera roll had 151 photos of my salads. Now there are 327. Yikes! For this blog post I decided to mark some of them as “favorites” and see what happens. I especially like using so many of our own ingredients from the garden. However, I am finding it excruciating to put only one picture here even though my sensible husband says that to send too many salad photos at once could be risky. So, here’s “Round One.”