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Christmas day was spent with family at my parents house in Los Gatos. We might as well have paddled the one hour drive south -- the roads were swamped and rain was coming down in sheets.

I volunteered to try out a new salad to go with the rest of the holiday feast, but heard a collective groan from all when I said it would be made with iceberg lettuce. Iceberg lettuce is a staple of college-dorm cafeterias and bad delicatessens the country over -- and from this its reputation may never recover. This Sonoma Salad recipe came from the Neiman Marcus Cookbook, which seems to be brimming with crowd pleasers. I'm three for three on good new recipes from this book. I thought, why not shake it up a bit, everyone is tired of the yuppie mixed green stand-bys.

The poppy seed dressing was easy to make, it is on the sweet side, but a dose of grated onion (and the juices from the grated onion) along with the powdered mustard, gave the dressing a healthy dose of savory sophistication. Oil, poppy seeds, and white wine vinegar rounded out this creamy vinaigrette.

My sister stepped up to make the candied walnuts, but of course we got distracted by all the great new cookbooks and kitchen gadgets floating around and they got a bit crispy -- still tasty though.

Tossed it all up with the iceberg, some sliced apples, a sprinkling of blue cheese -- no one was complaining. I really enjoyed this salad and will make it again. It seemed to me like a perfect daytime lunch salad and the poppy seed dressing is delicious.

My family once again has chosen to support my cookbook vice, and I ended up coming home with a carload of new cookbooks including : Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food, the Nancy Silverton's La Brea Sandwich book, and the Deborah Madison Green's Cookbook. There appear to be a slew of amazing recipes to try in each of these.

In some of the early entries on this site I didn't request permission to run the recipe I was writing about from the publisher so it won't appear here. The majority of entries on 101 Cookbooks will have the recipes attached, this just happens to be one of the ones that doesn't.

From: The Neiman Marcus Cookbook Page: 50

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