Raising the Salad Bar: Beyond Leafy Greens – Inventive Salads with Beans, Whole Grains, Pasta, Chicken and More

By Catherine Walthers

Photography by Alison Shaw
Lake Isle Press (June 5, 2007)
Paperback, 272 pages
  • 19.95, Personalized by Author (U.S. shipping only)
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This volume of over 135 inventive salad recipes is timed to answer the great demand for healthy recipes with organic ingredients. Walthers offers up delicious twists on tired classics, including pasta salads, salad wraps, bean salads, whole grain salads, and chicken salads. Helpful hints on preparation and health benefits appear throughout.

Published Reviews

“You’ll never think of a salad as being just a plate of leafy greens again when you feast your eyes on the delicious, sumptuous salads in Catherine Walthers Raising the Salad Bar. Walthers shows how to create salads for all occasions – and seasons – that are mouthwatering culinary masterpieces. Raising the Salad Bar offers innovative idea and combinations, new ingredients and vinaigrettes and dozes of delicious recipes for all seasons and for all tastes. These recipes are brimming with fresh vegetables and fruits, leafy greens and herbs, grains, beans, fish, and more. Salad Bar also offers new takes on traditional family classics such as potato, pasta, and chicken salad, designed to take advantage of the vast range of new ingredients available in markets. Named one of the 10 best cookbooks for summer.”
~ National Public Radio, 2008

“Summertime is salad time! Raising the Salad Bar is a small book, but it carries a grand repertoire of dressings — one tailored for each recipe and a generous glossary with more in the back. 

A garlicky lemon dressing makes a bright foil for Arugula and Avocado Salad with Shaved Parmesan, like the lime dressing that wakes up Fresh Corn Salad. If you still can’t warm up to your leafy greens, there’s an ample helping of pasta salads, seafood salads, chicken salads (like the sprightly Chicken Salad with Fruit and Toasted Pecans), even bean salads, too, making this book a terrific go-to resource the day before a picnic.”
~ T. Susan Chang, NPR

“This beautiful book is full of creative combinations for salads that are easily the main attraction of a great meal.”
~ Cheshire Garden (Cheshiregarden.com)

“A genuinely useful cookbook packed with first-rate recipes and stunning photography. Raising the Salad Bar by Catherine Walthers (a Boston-area private chef who’s cooked for celebrities so discreet we can’t name them) runs the gamut from crowd-pleasing flavors – BLT chicken salad with ranch dressing, lemony asparagus and artichoke pasta salad – to exotica such as chickpea, watercress and mango salad with lime-curry vinaigrette. Buy it now, thank us later.”
~ Improper Bostonian

“Raising the Salad Bar by Martha’s Vineyard private chef Catherine Walthers and photographer Alison Shaw offers 140 recipes crammed with the tastes, textures and colors of summer’s bounty.”
~ Cape Cod Times

“Raising the Salad Bar achieves exactly what its title promises, moving far “beyond a plate of leafy greens.” It’s all about refreshing, creative salads made not only of greens but also beans, and gains, seafood, poultry and meat. Ms. Walthers brings salad into the 21st century.”
~ Martha’s Vineyard Gazette

Reader Reviews

“RAISING THE SALAD BAR is one of the best cookbooks I have ever sampled. I prepared dozens of the salads, and each is more scrumptious than the next. The Wheat Berry Salad with Citrus Dressing was my favorite until my husband prepared the Baby Spinach and Strawberry Salad and the Seared Scallop Salad with Watercress and Pineapple for my birthday and both were dazzlers.
~ Susan Schwartzman

“I LOVE this book! I don’t think there is a bad recipe in it – and I have made quite a few. My husband & I enjoyed the Tortilla Chicken Salad so much I made it, plus another salad, for a get together with friends. Two people there asked for the name of the book so they could buy it too. (It’s THAT kind of book. Once you taste these salads, you have to own it.)”
~ Caroline Christie, Atlanta, Georgia

“This is truly an awesome collection of delicious recipes! They are interesting, beautiful, easy to make, and very healthful. My entire family asks for things out of it – and that is really nothing short of a miracle. It is the first book I grab when I want to bring something to a gathering or occasion. I highly, highly recommend it!”
~ B. Rosamilla

“One of the most used cookbooks in my kitchen and I own over 500 cookbooks but this book stands head and shoulders above all the others when it comes to innovative uses of greens and grains plus those marvelous dressings – YUM! My husband and I have enjoyed EVERY recipe I have made from this book and to date I have prepared about half the book so I figure I know what I’m talking about!”
~ Sondra Oravitz

“This terrific book is full of inspiration. If you are a salad eater, but find that you’re stuck in a rut, this wonderfully illustrated book will crank up your creativity. Great main dish salads and side dishes, too. And not just green salads, but potato, pasta and other grains. I especially love the section on how to make good dressings. A must – and a great gift. Enjoy!”
~ DDN, Maine

“I had pretty much sworn off of buying new cookbooks because there are so many great internet sources for recipes. I still don’t know what came over me the day that I bought it but I am so glad I did! I have since made many of these salads for myself and gatherings and each has been a huge hit. The ingredients are easy to find and preparation is simple enough to do at the last minute. Seriously, I have never been a dressing whipper-upper before but I haven’t served a store bought dressing in the year that I’ve owned this book! My everyday dressing is the Maple Balsamic Vinaigrette.
~ T. Machesney, New Haven, Conn

“This is such a wonderful book. My husband is not (or was not) a salad person, but this book has turned him round. So many wonderful options for every season, and easy to make, too!”
~ Laurel Van Haadrade

“If you like fresh vegetables, chicken, seafood, meat, fruit…if you like FOOD, buy this book. I’ve had it two weeks and have already made 5 recipes, with two more planned for this weekend. The definition of “salad” is truly raised way above traditional salad bar fare. It’s not just for summer, either. You will use this book all year long.”
~ D.J. Giles, Hunt Valley, MD

“Healthful and delicious don’t have to be polar opposites anymore. These recipes are so refreshing and easy to make!”
~ ‘Writer and Reader’, Stamford, Conn