Mandy's Gourmet Salads: Recipes for Lettuce and Life

by Mandy Wolfe, Rebecca Wolfe, Meredith Erickson

Overview

#1 BESTSELLING COOKBOOK! An overwhelmingly gorgeous cookbook packed with simple and delicious recipes for salads and more!

There's nothing a Mandy's salad can't fix. Want an explosion of color, texture, flavor and fabulousness? Look no further. Inside the pages of this stunning cookbook (and the Mandy's restaurants it's named after) lies everything you need to take your salad game from a meh-maybe, to wooooah, baby!!

Mandy's gourmet salads are a jewel of Montreal's (jam-packed) food scene. What started as a 3ft counter at the back of Mimi & Coco clothing store is now an 8 location success story, with ongoing expansion in every direction. Behind Mandy's are the irresistable Wolfe sisters, Mandy and Rebecca. Mandy is in charge of menu inspiration and creation; Rebecca leads the design of all their restaurant locations. More is more is the mantra for both: more colour, more texture, more vibrancy, more life!

In Mandy's Gourmet Salads, Mandy and Rebecca talk you through how to create their coveted salads at home, including easy prep steps for essential ingredients, how to mix their famous dressings, and how to combine flavours and textures to create a salad masterpiece. Also inside are recipes for Mandy's nutritious, filling and fantastic grain bowls (for those who want a bit more sustenance) as well as chapters dedicated to smoothies and sweets (sharing Mandy's famous chocolate chip cookie recipe for the first time...). Mandy's Gourmet Salads is a feast, for the eyes as well as the tastebuds—and More Mandy's, their bestselling follow up cookbook, is avaiable to buy now too!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525610472
Publisher:	Appetite by Random House
Publication date:	07/07/2020
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	142,362
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 10.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

MANDY and REBECCA WOLFE are the founders and creative minds behind Mandy's. Mandy is the company's creative food director and head chef, while Rebecca works as the brand manager and designs each of the restaurant locations. Together they founded the charity The Welcome Collective, an organization that welcomes asylum seekers to Canada. Both live in Montreal: Rebecca in Westmount with her husband and three children, and Mandy in Little Burgundy with her husband and four kids.

MEREDITH ERICKSON is the co-author of the bestselling Joe Beef cookbooks, among many others. Her first solo cookbook, Alpine Cooking, is published in Fall 2019. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Elle, Saveur, Monocle and Lucky Peach.

Read an Excerpt

From "Our Salads"

What sets Mandy’s apart from all the other salad joints out there?

A lot. But mostly: ratios and top-quality everyyyything—plus very caring staff and the ambience of our locations (more on that later). We’re essentially a salad lab, one with weekly creative meetings where we try all the new flavor combinations of the season and also retest our current menu items. We’re always thinking about ratios, both in the balance of our dressings and for our salads as a whole (e.g., no sogginess!).

It’s really easy to f*#k up the ratio of a salad (too soggy, too much acid, too bitter), so getting it right is something we spend a lot of time on. Our general rules? Well, texturally, we like to make sure there are equal parts creaminess (avocado in almost every salad, or a nice soft cheese!), crunchiness (pita, tortilla, toasted nuts or seeds, or a crunchy vegetable), tartness—either from citrus (lemon or lime) in the salad dressing or tangy fruit in the salad (pomegranate seeds, pear, apple, cranberries)—and always—always—fat (olive oil, mayonnaise, egg, cheese, nuts, or, yes, avocado again).

Our flavor combinations are often globally inspired, but whenever we can, we use local and organic ingredients (almost always). We have a special “Monthly Salad” every month, and these are always in line with the seasons. During our Canadian winter months for example, we use fewer tomatoes and berries, but we ramp up on pears, apples, pumpkin, kale, and of course root vegetables like sweet potatoes, beets, squash, leeks, garlic, and fennel. And we crave our grain bowls (more about those on page 173) and farro and seeds to keep us going through those −30°C months!

In the summer in Quebec, it’s a produce free-for-all and an annual reminder of how lucky we are to live where we do. A combination of fresh blueberries, melons, corn, peas, tomatoes, and peaches all make appearances in our salads. And being located on the shores of the Saint Lawrence River means that spring brings a whole host of crabby, clammy, shrimpy, lobstery seafood goodness our way too.

Editorial Reviews

"The Montreal salad shop’s first cookbook isn’t just about how to artfully compose the perfect salad: it’s the story of two sisters and a shared love of good food." — Chatelaine

“With brightly coloured photos of greens, bowls and sweets practically popping off the pages, Mandy’s Gourmet Salads will inspire summer picnics, BBQs and much more.” — HELLO!


 

From the Publisher