Hey, it's Sally Swift from the Splendid Table coming to you, yep, from a quiet room. It's actually a closet in my new studio. I am making do it home, just like a lot of you. So I have been checking with people across the country, and while toilet paper is nowhere to be found, the

produce aisles seem to be pretty okay so far. So we thought it timely to revisit an interview with,

I'm just going to say it, a salad genius. Her name is Eileen Rosen. Without Eileen, I am pretty sure

that the kale salad would not have had its day. You can decide how you feel about that.

Anyway, she's written a book called Saladish that is packed with unusual ideas about what can make a good salad, and she is one free thinker.

So here she is talking with our friend, Russ Parsons.

You know, for most cooks, salads often seem like, you know, they're kind of an afterthought.

You know, there's a little bit of lettuce, a couple of other things that are added, mainly because you need color, a standard dressing.

But you take a very broad and very creative view of salads, even including ingredients like tofu skin and rice cakes, all of which kind of begs

the question, just how do you define salad?

You're definitely right.

It's definitely a big, broad, bold definition.

And for me, it can contain almost anything, grains, beans, legumes, proteins, or not. But usually vegetable-focused,

can be cooked, can be raw, or in combination. And I think temperature is really key. I'm a big

proponent of serving everything at room temperature or cold. And I think that makes the definition

feel more fluid and perhaps easier to convince

others that that might be harder to convince that it's a salad. It's just temperature being

key, vegetable focused. And then anything that's available is fair game.

What are the hallmarks that make a salad great?

What makes it work?

I think it's really all about contrasts in texture and in flavor.

And textures, toothsome, fluffy, crunchy, crispy, hefty,

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