Read Mindy Fox’s latest cookbook, “Salads: Beyond the Bowl” (Kyle), and inevitably you’ll look at salads in a new light.

Fox, a teacher and La Cucina Italiana magazine food editor, learned to enjoy salads of all types as a child from her grandmother, later as a teen living in New England and, finally, while in college (including a year studying in Paris). Salad is the one dish, she claims, that she would choose to accompany her on a desert island.

Her more than 100 diverse recipes cover the gamut from vegetables and fruits, to grains, legumes and beans; nuts and seeds to eggs, pasta and potatoes; fresh herbs to all kinds of cheeses. Vegetarians and meat-eaters can tailor the recipes to suit their preferences.