Try These Fresh, Seasonal Salad Recipes

Miso-Maple Sugar Snap Pea, Turnip and Strawberry Salad

When top food personalities such as Nigella Lawson and Food Network host Molly Yeh sing a book’s praises, you know it’s a winner. Tenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds was inspired in part by author Hetty Lui McKinnon’s admiration for her father, a Chinese immigrant to Australia where McKinnon grew up. He worked in a Sydney market and brought home crates of fresh items, and McKinnon fell in love with such produce. In this lush book, she features 22 “essential” fruits and vegetables, around which she builds more than 180 delectable recipes. This salad showcases her bicultural perspective with a deeply flavorful miso-maple dressing sure to impress.

Try it: Miso-Maple Sugar Snap Pea, Turnip and Strawberry Salad

Baby Kale and Strawberry Salad

Over the past decade, James Beard Award-winning chef Steven Satterfield of Atlanta’s Miller Union has made a name for himself by offering a veggie-forward menu that even staunch carnivores love. He works closely with local farmers to bring the freshest seasonal produce to the plate — then he lets it shine. In his second cookbook, Vegetable Revelations: Inspiration for Produce-Forward Cooking, Satterfield teaches readers to show off produce to its best advantage. The book is arranged by botanical category — legumes, mushrooms, roots, leaves, stalks and more — and offers new, unexpected ways to enjoy nature’s bounty. It’s not a vegetarian book, but plants are the real stars here.

Try it: Baby Kale and Strawberry Salad

Summer Panzanella

If the prospect of coming up with new meals feels daunting, A Dish for All Seasons: 125+ Recipe Variations for Delicious Meals All Year Round is just the thing to shake you out of a rut. Author and photographer Kathryn Pauline, of the Saveur Award-winning blog Cardamom and Tea, organized this serviceable, nearly 300-page book to really work for home cooks. She starts with 26 base recipes — for simple items such as a frittata, crostinis, roasted vegetables or a sheet pan dinner — and offers four seasonal variations (spring, summer, fall and winter), so you can cook from the book all year. Her recipe for Summer Panzanella includes juicy tomatoes, fresh herbs and a surprise ingredient: nectarines. If you fall in love with the summer version, the cookbook offers tips to transition the salad to fall.

Try it: Summer Panzanella

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