Remember, arugula is aromatic salad green but has a bitter, peppery taste. You either love it or hate it. A good way to develop a taste for it is to add a little to your favorite salad greens like red leaf lettuce.

How to Make a Simple Mustard Vinaigrette One of the first things I learned to make when I was learning how to cook or should I say being taught how to cook was a simple vinaigrette. I was in my 20's and didn't even know at the time how much I would enjoy spending time in the kitchen. I was dating this wonderful woman who lived in a studio on the Upper East Side of N...

One of my favorite salads and one that I usually request when dining out is Caesar Salad. I remember dining at a couple of restaurants in New York City where they made the Caesar Salad table side with such flair and showmanship. Now you are lucky if they make the dressing from scratch. I have found several great cooking videos that show you how to make a great Caesar...

Arrange all three salads nicely on a plate. Garnish them with butter lettuce and hard cooked eggs for lunch. You might sense what it is like to grow up with a French Maman who often makes dishes like these. Don't forget the baguette!

Classic Caesar Salad This recipe comes from Chef Don Zajac who happened upon my recipe for Caesars Salad and decided to email me and let me know that it was wrong. No problem. Chef Don has done extensive research on this subject so I am happy to be able to share his historically correct version with you. Please check out my interview with Chef Don for his...

Cobb salad is a quintessential composed salad usually containing avoado, bacon and blue cheese. Here, it is reinvented as a perfect cook-with-your-kids salad. Stick with the traditional ingredients or use your family's favorites. I guarantee you'll have a great time making this salad with your kids.

My dad's recipe for cole slaw. Not only does it remind me strongly of my childhood, but it's set apart from other slaws because dad used orange juice in the dressing. Really good stuff; I think you'll like it.

This is a classic dish and would work perfectly on a bed of lettuce or even just as a side dish on its own. Green Goddess dressing, bright with tarragon and salty with anchovies works well with the earthy potatoes and the sweet, succulent shrimp.

A trio of summer salads: Scallop and Watercress, Garbanzo Bean and a Lobster and Avocado salad. All three take advantage of the fresh flavors of summer. While the Garbanzo Salad would be at home at a picnic or a family dinner, the other two salads would be welcome even at a fancy dinner party.

This green fruit salad contains almost every green fruit I can think of. Light, bright and refreshing, it is a perfect summer salad. It would also make a lovely light dessert.

Insalate Caprese is a perfect dish for summer. With all the wonderful fresh tomatoes and basil around, do some of your own experimenting with it and see what combination works for you.

This sweet-tart vinaigrette pairs nicely with pears, nuts and pungent cheeses. Now that I think of it, crispy bacon or pancetta would also make a welcome addition. Thinking outside the box, you might also brush it on pumpkin or butternut squash before roasting. That would be fantastic!

I'm looking through some old recipe files I've been saving for years when I came across this yellowed crumpled up piece of notebook paper that has my dad's recipe for homemade cole slaw. I've been looking for this recipe for years, but couldn't remember where I stuck it. I can vividly remember that hot summer day at the Jersey shore when I bugged him to let me jot do...

This hearty salad is perfect for late summer or early fall, when figs are at their peak. The combination of the earthy roasted mushrooms, the sweet-tart vinaigrette and the crisp, sweet peppers is not to be missed.

Roasted pears, toasted walnuts and creamy goat cheese work together beautifully in this salad of mixed greens. Dressed with a roasted pear vinaigrette, this is a real keeper.

With all the wonderful produce available during the summer months, I thought it would be fun to write about yellow tomatoes and provide you with a couple of recipes illustrating their simple but complex characteristics. So I went to a new chef friend, Chris Beane, and asked him for recipes that will bring out the incredible flavors of these pommes d’amour (love appl...

The recipe below is a classic and easy to prepare at home. It calls for using Roquefort cheese, hence the name, but I recommend you substitute any blue cheese available like Danish Blue or one of the new American Blue Cheeses.

A lovely fall salad pairing sweet, juicy pears with mellow toasted pine nuts and sharp, salty gorgonzola cheese. This is a great salad to serve at a dinner party.

One of the most requested recipes I'm asked for is a good Sesame Dressing for salad, chicken or seafood. If you do a quick search on the Internet for 'sesame dressing,' you will find hundreds of variations for this simple Asian staple. Which one you decide on using may depend on your own personal tastes.

Cousin Vicki brought a bean salad recipe that was so good everyone had to have the recipe. I'm not sure where she found it but it was tasty so I wanted to share it with everyone. This is a perfect time of year to serve a bean salad as a side at any barbecue.

I grew up eating sliced cucumber salad but we called it agurke salat (a-gorka sal-at) which is the Danish name. My mother being a dane would serve it to us as a side dish or on open faced sandwiches called Smørrebrød. Just writing about these sandwiches is making my mouth water.

A simple marinated tomato and sweet onion side dish, do make sure you make this with ripe tomatoes in season to take full advantage of their flavor.

If you are looking for a great summer side dish to serve with just about anything, I highly recommend you try this recipe. My wife's sister served this salad to us over the weekend twice. Once with steak and the next night with grilled salmon. It was even better the second night.

This time of year we live on fresh tomatoes, mozzarella and basil from our garden or the farmer's market. This is a novel presentation of a Caprese salad called Hassleback.

My wife served this with a tomato that she cut up into eighths and arranged on a plate with the tuna salad inside. She finished it off with a sprig of fresh dill on top.

Panzanella, little swamp, is another tomato favorite, a salad of oil, vinegar, tomatoes, basil, cucumber, minced onion, and stale bread soaked in water and squeezed dry - a true invention from necessity. Since bread must be bought every day, Tuscan cooking makes good use of leftovers.

Arugula is an aromatic salad green with a bitter, peppery taste. Also known as rocket or rucola, it can be eaten raw in salads, wilted like we are doing in this recipe, added to stir-fry or made into pesto. I often add it to my red leave lettuce salads to spice it up a little.