The first red cabbage recipe only called for half of my head of cabbage which meant, of course, that I needed to try another recipe for the other half. After a hunt through most of my cookbooks, I settled on this recipe from Nigella Lawson’s Feast, since I had most of the ingredients (points for using things from the pantry) and it looked good.
This recipe was, if anything, more delicious than the previous red cabbage salad recipe. It was crunchy, tangy, colorful. Fun to eat and well worth all of the chopping. This one is definitely on my “make again” list. I might even go out and buy a red cabbage to make it instead of waiting for another one to mysteriously appear at school.
Red Seasonal Salad
From Feast
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients:
500 g cold cooked turkey, shredded
2 red chillies
1 clove garlic
2 tablespoons caster sugar
3 teaspoons rice vinegar
juice of 1 lime, or 3 tablespoons
4 tablespoons fish sauce (nam pla); I used about 3 tablespoons of soy sauce instead
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 red onion
black pepper
700 g red cabbage
250 g radishes
5 tablespoons chopped coriander
Directions:
Finely chop the chillies with or without seeds depending on how hot you like it, and drop them in a large bowl, in fact the largest bowl you have, then mince in the garlic. Add the sugar, vinegar, lime juice, fish sauce and vegetable oil. Peel and finely slice the red onion into half moons and add it to the mixture in the bowl, grind over some black pepper and leave to steep for 15 minutes, making sure everything’s immersed in the astringent liquid.
Add the shredded turkey and leave to marinate for a further 15 minutes. Shred the red cabbage as finely as you can and add to the bowl. Cut the radishes into eight segments rather as you would open an orange (this way you get both more crunch and more red in each slice than if you’d cut the radishes in fine rounds).
Mix the cabbage and radishes into the bowl with the steeped turkey in its oniony dressing (which is why you needed to start with your biggest bowl) and toss together very well. Work through about half of the chopped coriander and sprinkle the remaining half on top of the salad when you turn it out on to a plate or serving dish.
This is one of those salads that is so crunchy and full of chew that you really feel you’re getting a jaw and chin work-out as you eat it, which I find very satisfying, both psychologically and digestively.