Salad Days

Mark Bittman, cookbook author and king of minimalist cooking, published another 101-list. This time it’s all about salads!

There are two things I love about this list. First, a lot of the recipes are vegan. Salad’s beneficial properties start to go downhill when you add meat and cheese. (Both are packed with saturated fat that is linked to cancer mortality and cardiovascular mortality). Second, the recipes include lots of summer fruits and herbs, proving that almost any fresh ingredient can become a salad.

Here are few salads that inspire me:

1. Cube watermelon and combine with tomato chunks, basil and basic vinaigrette. You can substitute peach for the watermelon or the tomato (but not both, O.K.?).

7. Grate carrots, toast some sunflower seeds, and toss with blueberries, olive oil, lemon juice and plenty of black pepper. Sweet, sour, crunchy, soft.

12. Combine sliced fennel and prune plums; serve with vinaigrette spiked with minced ginger. Nice pairing.

29. Pit and halve cherries (or halve and pit cherries), then cook gently with olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar until they break down. Toss with chopped radicchio, endive, escarole or a combination, some toasted hazelnuts and more oil and vinegar, if necessary.

34. Grill quartered romaine hearts, radicchio and/or endive. Drizzle with olive oil and sherry vinegar, and add dill and chopped shallots. Teeny-tiny croutons are great on this.

41. Halve avocados and scoop out some but not all of their flesh. Roughly chop and toss with black beans, queso fresco, cilantro, chopped tomatillos and lime juice. Serve in the meaty avocado shells.

44. Make a crisp grilled cheese sandwich, with good bread and not too much good cheese. Let it cool, then cut into croutons. Put them on anything, but especially tomato and basil salad. This you will do forever.

60. [Sear tuna until rare (for that matter, you could leave it raw) and cut it into small cubes.] Mix with chopped apples, halved seedless grapes, chopped red onion, olive oil, a bit of cumin and black pepper.

For the whole list, visit the NYTimes Website.