Salad for President: a cookbook inspired by Artists by Julia Sherman

 I have always thought that when artists are united they create masterpieces. In this case the masterpiece is a cookbook.

Creative, inspired, amazing, sweet, complete: Salad for President A cookbook inspired by artists by Julia Sherman is born as a cookbook for inspiring you and your creativity for special events, dinner and lunches with a different touch: the one of salad.
Why?

 Salad is versatile. You can mix various veggies and an egg, chicken and various kind of salads. You can get great dishes with avocado, mango or other fruits and veggies mixed together.
You will learn how to create, add, discovering at the same time wonderful and functional dishes.
What I loved the most of this book: the great inspiration. It's spring and we should all "Think more veggie than meat."
Salad is purification but also strong ingredients. A salad is a complete or a fresh dish. 

 
Everything started when Julia Sherman, the author of this book created on the roof of the MoMa Museum a garden made by a lot of veggies. Unthinkable? Her purpose to unify creativity with good food.
 
The first foreword of this yummy  cookbook by Christine Muhlke editor of Bob Appetit. 
Invited by Sherman, ms Muhlke confessed that  to see a garden built on the roof of MoMa impressive. They could watch Manhattan, NY, an aggressive city where cement the most important element like also the perennial rush of people in "The city that never sleeps" would sing Liza Minnelli.
Thinking paradoxically that there was a garden on a rooftop of one of the most important museums of the world growing up with human rhythms, old, ancestrals, completely different from the one of the Big Apple, touching.
 
The second foreword is an interview by Julia Sherman with Robert Irwin creator of the Central Garden at the Getty Center.

Born in an artistic family, Julia Sherman went to Los Angeles where she worked in movie industry at the same time continuing to develop his artistic ideas. 

It was when she returned to NYC that the  MoMa contacted Julia Sherman for the creation of a special garden on the rooftop of the museum. Julia agreed and planted more than 50 herbs, and they were all amazingly yummy.

What I found more beauty and surreal was to seeing in various pictures this corner of green on the roof, with a lot of smiling people enjoying some time there eating and drinking as if they would have been in a countryside. More than understandably they loved the atmosphere.Real, the one a human being should experience everyday where possible. The contact with nature essential.

The garden  called Salad Garden. At the same time once the project started MoMa established an important connection with the Getty Museum of Los Angeles known for their Central Garden.

The Central Garden is a special place for a lot of people. People love to organize there great picnics, and they love to spend some quality time in a calm place, normal, distant and at the same time close to the city.

In The Central Garden there is a special section dedicated at the garden and called: Getty Salad Garden.
Creations with veggies are not new. Forget it. The Getty used a book pretty old: 431 years ago people suggested creativity with veggies, fruits, flowers. A joy for eyes a joy for mouth :-)

Plus veggies, flowers, are multi-colored. Yellow, red, orange, green, pink the best food for inspiring creative process.
When to eat a salad? Breakfast, evening, lunch, while you are in an air plane, during a moment of break. When you want. There is not a specific moment of the day. All the moments are perfect for a salad. 
 
Who helped Julia Sherman to write this book all dedicated to Salads?A lot of creative people and my sensation is that each of them loved what they prepared for Julia Sherman and for themselves and that's why these recipes are real unforgettable success.

I will mention some of them.

We will meet Alice Waters, figurehead of Slow Food movement. Francis Ford Coppola, Varda and Godard some of the filmmakers appreciated her dinners. The message of Alice is simple: "Eat seasonally, know your farmer, respect the earth and learn to cultivate food yourself."
Madeleine Fitzpatrick is a gardener, painter and performer, Yui Tsujimura is a  japanese master ceramist in love with persimmon caprese. Two members of the Boredoms, and many many more...
 
Julia and his creative friends will teach to all of us how to cook pretty quick for a lot of number of people without any kind of panic attack ;-) but also how to  prepare wonderful salads for breakfast or brunch,  impressing our guests with special salads for special occasions. 

A chapter dedicated to cocktails, soup, desserts but the one I loved the most the chapter for helping all of you to grow up your own wonderful garden because there is nothing more beauty than to see growing up some veggies in your garden! 
Trust me. I live in a countryside...I know that.

Enjoy this book. Enthusiastic, smiling, sunny, creative, plenty of fresh, delicious, sweet, wonderful salads for all tastes, you will adore it.
This book will be available on May published by ABRAMS.

I thank NetGalley and ABRAMS for this book.



Anna Maria Polidori