Katie Webster

This roasted delicata squash salad is a superfood extravaganza! I’ve tossed it together with walnuts, apple, cabbage, and quick-pickled red onion dressing. (Yeah, I’m a total rebel and made the dressing in the microwave.) After all the holidays, parties, lack of sleep, dozens of cocktail-sized meatballs on toothpicks, and one-too-many Champagne toasts, I often get a little wacked out and start craving beet juice and kombucha in an attempt to get myself back on track.

Winter is the season to get a bit adventurous and embrace that strange-looking orb known as jicama, the faintly hairy bulb called celeriac, and the humbly earnest rutabaga. This week we turned them into inspired and luscious salad after salad. No lettuce required! Just peel, shred, chop, and roast and you can transform these storing veggies and random roots into no-wilt salads for tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s lunch, too.

Borrowing flavors from the classic French frisée and poached egg bistro salad, this salad departs from the expected snarl of frilly greens and instead starts with a base of crunchy julienne-cut kohlrabi. I’ve also added in a touch of bittersweet Belgian endive for contrast. True to form, it is topped with a perfectly runny yolk egg and of course a sprinkling of smoky crumbled bacon.

Take a vacation south of the border on your lunch break when you pack yourself this chopped jicama and shrimp salad. It is a feast for the eyes, with a rainbow of cheery colors and textures. I’ve always had a thing for composed salads, where the ingredients are artfully laid out on top of the salad greens and then drizzled with dressing before serving — no tossing.

Brown sugar and coconut oil roasted, glazed rutabaga and snap peas are served warm, and drizzled with a brightly acidic dressing for a sweet and sour no-lettuce salad. Rutabaga is having a moment. It’s showing up on menus and blogs, and in cookbooks. I’m not sure if we should give credit to the rise of the root vegetable-loving diets, like Whole30 and Paleo, or if it has become a necessity due to the upswing in winter CSAs.

I gave the usual noodles the boot in this sesame ginger chicken salad. Instead I tossed shredded celery root (also known as celeriac) with a simple sesame seed ginger vinaigrette made with toasted sesame oil, maple, and tamari. A handful of chopped fresh basil is added for even more flavor. Calling celery root the chimera of vegetables would be a bit of a culinary exaggeration, but I am not going to deny that it is a bit of a changeling.