Chefs and other recipe developers are inventive when it comes to creating appetising main courses or side salads. They use nuts, mushrooms, fruits, herbs, vegetables and a variety of greens, and spend a little additional time making the ingredients extra-delicious.
Chef Bob Brantly illustrates how taking an extra step or two can turn a healthy salad into nutritious gourmet fare.
"I do what I call my flavour boosters," he says. "There are different things you can do to make ingredients more enticing and taste better, like roasting fennel, roasting tomatoes, making smoked Portobello mushrooms."
Chef Brantly says he has "a million different salads," and he takes advantage of whatever fresh ingredients are available to create new recipes.
He might toast cumin seeds, then grind them and sprinkle them over a salad with pecans, roasted red peppers, black beans and corn on rice and spinach with chipotle dressing. He prepares tomato-basil couscous, placing it on rocket leaves and drizzling it with lemon vinaigrette. When berries are in season, he makes Almond Chicken Salad with strawberries and raspberry vinaigrette.
To keep salads healthy, the chef has a large repertoire of low calorie vinaigrette dressings.
"Vinaigrette dressings are really good," he says. "You get some fresh olive oil, fruit juice and herbs and it's hard to go wrong. That's pretty healthy."
He might whisk together grapefruit juice and wine vinegar and mix it with olive oil. He'll then drizzle the dressing over a bed of greens and top it with crab, shrimp and avocados. Sometimes he'll use vegetable stock as part of a warm vinaigrette, incorporate mustard or puree fresh berries. To add a crunchy texture to salads, Chef Brantly likes making edible salad bowls out of fresh Parmesan cheese.
"It just depends what your menu is," he emphasises. "Salads can run the gamut."  Chef Brantly offers these quick and easy tips for adding flavourful pizzazz to salads.
Use fresh or frozen berries or fruit juice in your own vinaigrette dressings.
To make vinaigrette, simply whisk together fruit puree or juice, vinegar and any desired herbs. Then whisk while adding olive oil in a thin stream, until the dressing achieves a flavour and consistency you like.
When making vinaigrettes, experiment with different vinegars, such as wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar.
Make nuts' flavours explode by toasting them. Simply spread them in a pan and cook in the oven at 250 degrees for just a few minutes, until they start to sizzle and their aroma is released.
Roast them!
The flavour of vegetables will be enhanced if you roast them. This is as easy as drizzling the vegetables with olive oil, wrapping them in foil and tossing them in the oven or on a grill.
Make roasted tomatoes or peppers by drizzling them with olive oil and placing on a baking sheet. Broil them until their skins are blackened, and then place in a brown paper bag for a few minutes. The skins should then slip right off.
Fresh herbs like basil and coriander and parsley add great flavours to salads.
Experiment with different types of salad greens. Some of the more spicy ones, like rocket or watercress, add interesting flavour contrasts.
Guardian Eat Right