Sometimes you just cannot beat a salad - easy to prepare, beautiful to behold and delicious to eat - and here Paul Gayler gives you his personal selection of the very best, from the most refreshing of simple summer meals, to the most inventive of warm winter salads that bring colour and much-needed vitamins to even the darkest, coldest day. A good salad is an impeccable balance of flavours - combining hot, sour, salty and sweet in a way that highlights each ingredient to perfection and each recipe here does just that, whether in the simple but perfect partnership of two gorgeous ingredients (Date and Blood Orange Salad), in time-honoured classics (Aloo Chat) with a twist (Grilled Potato and Fennel Nicoise) or in explosive flavour combinations (Salad of Chickpeas, Cauliflower and Apricots) that mean you need never worry about whipping up a stunning, healthy, ready-in-minutes meal ever again.