Salad

Buttermilk gives a tangy flavor to this old-fashioned salad, which is great for a brunch picnic. Mixing the potatoes with a firm hand, so that some of the potato is mashed up, makes for a creamy potato salad. You can make this a few hours in advance. Refrigerate, covered, and serve cold. Taste for seasonings before serving.

Don’t confuse ricotta salata cheese with ricotta cheese. Made from lightly salted sheep’s milk curd that’s pressed and dried, firm ricotta salata is a notable cheese that originated in Sicily. It has a pleasant salty flavor that’s a little milder than pecorino Romano. Broccoli rabe, sometimes called Italian broccoli, is slightly bitter and earthy and makes an excellent base for a salad. This salad can be made a few hours in advance of serving, and it’s easy to double or triple the recipe for a large group.

This is an elegant salad in which an abundance of colorful, crunchy vegetables really picks up the flavor of the crab. Spiked with lemon juice and lightly bound with mayonnaise, it can be an entrée served over fresh greens or a great sandwich filling.

A chef at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco in the 1920s is said to have created this to honor George Arliss, an actor appearing there in a play entitled The Green Goddess. The dressing is made with an abundance of herbs and can be served with fish or shellfish as well as salads. Be sure to use fresh herbs: Dried just don’t deliver the same flavor. For this salad to look its best, place it in a bowl that’s twice the size of the greens so you’ll have plenty of room to toss.

This salad is practically a meal in itself, especially if you fan out a beautifully grilled sliced chicken breast or some shrimp on top. Because it contains raw egg, this dressing, which can be made ahead, should be refrigerated and used within three days.

This salad is easy to put together and makes a nice presentation when mounded on a platter. If you can find smoked chicken, by all means use it, but otherwise, a good roast chicken will suffice. The contrasting colors and flavors of the fruits and nuts, with a slightly sweet dressing, make this especially pleasing as a brunch entrée. If you would like to make sandwiches, toasted sevengrain bread is a good choice. If you’d like to get a head start on the salad, the whole thing can be made a day ahead and refrigerated until ready to serve.

A simple green salad, this one is made special by the unusually good vinaigrette. The dressing can be made up to three days ahead and stored, tightly covered, in the refrigerator.

Cobb Salad was born in the 1920s at Hollywood’s Brown Derby restaurant, where a restaurant manager by the name of Bob Cobb created it as a way to recycle leftovers. The classic vinaigrette dressing really makes this salad, which traditionally contains finely chopped chicken, bacon, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, and lettuce. All the ingredients are chopped and arranged to give a colorful presentation. I like the chicken when it’s grilled because it adds a smoky flavor and a pleasing crunchiness. If you prefer, you can also sear the chicken over high heat. Store Cobb dressing in the refrigerator and use leftovers within several days.

When a dish is called Niçoise (French for “as prepared in Nice”), it’s a safe bet that it contains tomatoes, tuna, green beans, and black olives. Though you could use jarred roasted peppers, the salad is best if you roast your own. And use the best-quality canned tuna that you can get—it makes a huge difference. Start this signature salad at least one hour in advance, so you can have eleven-minute boiled eggs ready and chilled. Ditto with the beans—they should be chilled after blanching. You may use either fresh green beans or the skinny French haricots verts in this recipe. All told, this is a beautiful salad, especially when the ingredients are cut carefully and arranged in groups. This dressing, good on greens of all kinds, will keep well, tightly covered, in the refrigerator for up to a week.

This dish can be served as a sandwich filling or as a stand-alone salad accompanied by favorite lettuces and veggies. We use canned tuna packed in spring water because it’s lighter than tuna packed in oil, and we make sure the apple is tart and crisp. Granny Smith apples are fine, but also Mutsu, Honeycrisp, or any good local crispy, tart apple will do. Add half the dressing at first and see if you need more—it’s up to you how well coated you want the tuna and apples to be.

This is a real deli-lovers sandwich, topped with Emmenthaler, which is a good sharp Swiss cheese. You’ll have enough Russian dressing for six sandwiches; you can keep the extra for a week in the refrigerator.

There is much that appeals about the crude crunch of a winter slaw—white, purple, and moss green—eaten under a gray and watery sky. The snap of raw cabbage under the teeth can be exhilarating, especially when there is some sharpness in the dressing. I use yogurt sometimes, or a vinaigrette with lemon instead of vinegar, and occasionally introduce a fiery flash of blood orange or even grapefruit. The pink variety works particularly well. The crucial point is that this salad has a clean bite to it. The idea of gummy mayonnaise and the traditional coleslaw doesn’t really enter into my head any more.

Green lentils and bacon has long been a salad worth making. I will occasionally fold in some shards of crisp, olive-oil-drenched toasted ciabatta or lots of whole parsley leaves. A couple of years ago I started moving the whole thing up a notch by putting the lentils against a few pieces of exquisite Spanish ham and adding a certain smokiness with wide slivers of zucchini, their edges blackened from the grill. This has become a late-summer lunch I can’t get enough of.

This colorful, big-flavored tomato salad is something you could eat alongside rose-pink cold roast beef, but it could easily make a more substantial candidate for a main course with the addition of a few croutons or some slices of olive oil–drenched toast. The colors are important here if the salad is to look lively—I usually use a mixture of tomatoes, including little peardrop ones and yellow cherry tomatoes. I think it is worth adding that this is also good with cilantro instead of basil.

Most Asian markets carry Japanese nanami togarashi seasoning. It is a mixture of ground chile, orange peel, spices, and sesame seeds. For this beef salad, it is simply a question of rolling the beef in the seasoning and searing it quickly in a heavy pan. The beef is barely cooked and is eaten thinly sliced, like carpaccio. There will be some left over for tomorrow. I cannot think of a better accompaniment for it than a simple tomato salad.