Salads to Start or Make a Meal

In a traditional menu the salad serves as a lively introduction filled with bright flavors, colors, and textures or as a graceful transition between the main course and the dessert to come. When it’s the first course, the salad can be almost anything—greens of course, but also a vegetable, sometimes a grain—and it can be warm or chilled. When it provides the respite, it needs to be simple and modest without calling undue attention to itself.

In a less traditional menu, more in keeping with how we’re eating today, a salad can make the whole meal. Many of these salads are varied and substantial enough to stand alone, like the Chick-Peas and Peppers with Pine Nut Dressing. A lighter meal might also be a collection of little salads that complement one another, such as two or three simple vegetable salads with some fresh or vinegary accents—radishes, pickled onions, strips of roasted peppers, olives, and hard-cooked eggs. In more modest portions most of these salads can begin or conclude a dinner.