Salad Party! Salad Party! Salad Party! š
Kristy Mucci's brilliant, compact, underrated book practically makes salads for you. It could put us out of business! š
YOU COULD EASILY MISTAKE one of our very favorite salad booksāSalad Party, by Kristy Mucciāfor a childrenās storybook or even a school primer.
And Mucci doesnāt mind if you do. Her bookās simple, vividly colored illustrations (by Ophelia Pang), economical text, and ingenious format are meant to be a primer on how to put together beautiful and delicious salads as naturally and automatically as you read a book or write a letter or do math (or refuse to do math).
Itās fun to use, and a great starting point for the salad-inept. Each page of the book is broken into three panelsāthe top one is for dressings, the middle is for toppings, and the bottom is for basesāwhich the reader flips back and forth, mixing and matching, to make over 3375 different complementary combinations. You could close your eyes before flipping the panels and still come up with a terrific lunch.
In fact, the bookās childlike enthusiasm and devotion to fruits and vegetables are a reflection of Mucciās own life. Long before sheād grown up, moved to NYC, made a life in food (including as a recipe developer, writer, and editor at Food52 and Saveur), she wasāthereās no other way to say itāprecociously enamored of beautiful produce. (Her official bio includes āproduce enthusiast.ā)
āAs long as Iāve been eating solid food, Iāve had a preference for vegetables and fruits in a really weird way,ā Mucci told me, by Zoom from Paris, where she moved in May. āIām produceās number-one fan. And the farmersāthe small farmers. Iām pretty sure no one can love those things more than I do.ā
Most of her favorite childhood memories revolve around beautiful produceāthanks in part to growing up in California, which she describes as magical. āEvery place we lived had some kind of fruit tree in the backyard,ā she said. āMy grandpa Danny had a fig tree, a pomegranate tree, and a plum tree right next to his fence. We were able to get plums, avocados and lemons.ā
She added: āMy dad was telling me recently that in preschool I used to trade my Gushers for another girlās fresh green beans from her familyās back garden.ā
Maybe youāve known plenty of kids who liked a nice vegetable or pretty piece of fruit. But how many of them grew up to be the kind of person who, upon meeting a bunch of farmers at Chicory festival in Seattle would end up traveling with them to Italy to tour the Veneto and visit radicchio growers and breeders and seed companies? Who among them tried to get a rutabaga-appreciation campaign started during a pandemic?
And how many are as devoted to salad as young Mucci was: āI used to sit on top of the kitchen counter in front of a giant bowl making salads as a child and āreallyādreaming that one day I would grow up and be known for making good salads.ā
I just love it when the dreams of little girls come true, especially when the odds seem stacked against themāas in Mucciās caseābut they maintain an appreciation of their good fortune, anywayāthe way Mucci has.
Salad Party almost didnāt happen. It started out as a pasta bookāwhich an editor had invited Mucci to write before deciding her catalogue had too much pasta in it and sheād rather have something with vegetables. Naturally, this thrilled Mucci: āI couldn't believe that was my life at that time. I felt so so lucky.ā
The timing was great, because everyone in NYC was obsessed with SweetGreen, standing in long lines at noon, waiting for their fancy, expensive salad lunches. But Salad Party would show them how make their own.
Mucci was especially grateful to have the project to focus on once she started going through a āconfusing and guttingā divorce. But when Salad Party came out in May 2020, the Pandemic had started raging and had rightly become the entire worldās main focus. (The publishing date was on her ex-husbandās birthday, of all days.) āI felt like this poor little book was doomed,ā Mucci said. Like a lot of books published during that time, Salad Party didnāt get the attention it otherwise might have. In the opinion of the Department of Salad, it has been seriously overlooked.
But the most challenging thing: Mucci contracted Covid quite early, before a vaccine was available, and today she suffers from Long Covid, which kept her completely bedridden for over a year and continues to limit her ability to get out more than once a weekāalong with other severe complications. The difficulties of the disease were a big factor in her decision to move from NYC to Paris, where she finds life not just cheaper but much easier. (Unlike New York, where you must visit several stores for various ingredients, she said, āYou can go into one shop and get all of the good things and theyāre all from farmers and everybody cares and everything's beautiful.ā)
Mucci continues to marvel at how good her life is. āThatās my regular takeaway: Lucky me,ā she said. āThis is ridiculous! This is my life.ā
The two of us bonded over our constant anxiety about running out of lemons and our constant incredulity that people still see salad as a side dish. (āItās the meal!ā Mucci said.). But as someone who cancels plans and stops answering the phone if I get a bruise or a splinter, I ended up as inspired by her positivity as I was by her creativity.