For the Kitchen Bookshelf : ...

New Salads: Quick, Healthy Recipes From Japan by Shinko Shimizu (Kodansha International: $17.95, 124 pp., illustrated).

This cookbook is a book of surprises. For its moderately small size, “New Salads” provides a goodly amount of information on how to prepare home-style Japanese salads with inspiring color photographs and effective step-by-step illustrations. The Japanese touch goes far beyond a harmonious color scheme in every salad. Healthful ingredients combined with characteristics of texture, taste and shape are considered in each recipe creation.

Providing innovative dressings with ethnic nouvelle vegetable, rice, pasta and seafood salads, the cookbook is a good source of new ideas for those who are getting tired of using the same basic dressings. An adventurous treatment for the American palate is the addition of such ingredients as cod or sea-urchin roe, pickled plums, black sesame seeds, tofu or bonito flakes to a basic sake or rice-vinegar dressing. The first few chapters discuss basic cutting techniques, preparation of fish and shellfish, rehydrating seaweed and cooking ingredients, which is helpful with the recipes that follow.