5 salads to make all summer long

The Southern California sunshine is out in full force. Like many apartment dwellers in Los Angeles, I don’t have air conditioning, and it takes real strategy to keep my home cool during the summer. In addition to artfully arranged oscillating fans and closing my curtains, I rarely turn my oven on. Especially during the day, turning on the oven can have my house feeling like a furnace for hours. And on those especially long and sticky days, I avoid turning on the stove too.

What to cook when avoiding additional heat in the kitchen? Salads arise as an obvious option. It’s an excuse to load up on produce from local farmers markets or make use of ingredients that are about to expire.

Salads get an unfair reputation of being boring or inadequate in sating hunger, but that doesn’t have to be true. They can be vegetable forward or feature fruits, and you can add grains, nuts, meat or starchy root vegetables if you’re craving something hearty.

In this set of salad recipes, two are completely raw, two require use of the stove and one involves roasting beets in the oven. I recommend doing that step in the morning or the night before you plan on making the salad to avoid overheating.

From light sides to filling main courses, here are five salads to make all summer long.

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Roasted Beet And Citrus Salad With Labneh And Zhoug

This salad with baby Chiogga beets and citrus is one that travels easily from summer to fall. Substitute blood orange for any fresh citrus from your local market and try adding other fruit and veggies that you’d like to pair with labneh and herbaceous zhoug that’s warm with cardamom and jalapeños.
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Cook time: 1 hour 15 minutes. Serves 2

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Crunchy And Spicy Green Potato Salad

Savor the end of snap pea season with this spicy green salad that also adds potatoes, Persian cucumbers, cilantro leaves and serrano chiles — strip the seeds from the chiles for a milder flavor. Once it gets too hot for snap peas, try substituting raw or charred tomatillo.
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Cook time: 45 minutes. Serves 8

(Shelby Moore / For The Times)

Red Cabbage And Date Salad With Preserved Lemon And Pistachios

With toasted cumin seeds, this fragrant salad features fresh herbs, crunchy raw pistachios and cabbage, zesty preserved lemon and chewy Deglet Noor dates while the dressing balances a touch of sweetness from honey with vinegar. If preserved lemon proves difficult to find, substitute for sliced rounds of kumquat sprinkled with Diamond Crystal kosher salt.
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Cook time: 15 minutes. Serves 4

(Rebecca Peloquin / For The Times)

Spicy Watermelon And Tahini Salad With Pistachios And Mint

For a fruity salad that’s light but packed with flavor, try this recipe that drizzles tahini dressing over wedges of salted and sugared watermelon, with toasted and chopped pistachios scattered on top for crunch, plus chiles that float under a colander and catch the watermelon’s juices.
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Cook time: 30 minutes. Serves 6 to 8

(Silvia Razgova)

Pomegranate And Citrus Salad

This salad can be adapted to whatever greens, fruits, nuts and seeds you have on hand, as long as you hit sweet, salty, tangy and crunchy notes. Drizzle it with good olive oil and add salt, pepper and the acid of your choice, and you’re done.
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Cook time: 15 minutes. Serves 12

(Evan Sung / For The Times)