Kohlrabi, Baby Cabbage and Apple Slaw with Yoghurt & Horseradish Dressing

Every now and then I get a craving for the peppery crunch of a good Sixties-style coleslaw, and because I can't be bothered to make it myself (cabbage is not something I usually have in the fridge) I slope off to Woolworths to buy a ready-made one. Then, after I've eaten it, I feel queasy, because the Woolies version is so over-mayonnaised, oily and - like so many Woolies ready-meals - under-flavoured. And doubly queasy because I paid through the nose for something I could have made in a jiffy at home.

With a spare fresh kohlrabi rolling around in my fridge (the other beauty having gone into last week's Kohlrabi 'Carpaccio' with Radishes and Blue Cheese), I thought I'd make a lighter, brighter version of coleslaw, using the usual ingredients, plus grated apple, baby red cabbage and a dollop of creamed horseradish.

If you can't find kohlrabi, leave it out, or add a little finely diced celery. Sultanas are entirely optional. Make this salad in small quantities, and very soon before you serve it, because it doesn't improve on standing.

Kohlrabi, Baby Cabbage and Apple Slaw with Yoghurt & Horseradish Dressing

For the salad:
juice of one lemon
1 red apple, cored but not peeled
1 baby (fist-sized) white cabbage
1 baby red cabbage
1 young kohlrabi bulb
2 carrots, peeled
a little handful of sultanas (optional)
1 t (5 ml) caraway seeds (optional)

For the dressing:
¾ cup (180 ml) good mayonnaise (Hellman's, Kraft or home-made)
½ cup (125 ml) plain thick white yoghurt
2 T (30 ml) white wine vinegar
1 t (5 ml) caster sugar
1 T (15 ml) creamed horseradish, or more, to taste
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Put the lemon juice into a big plastic bowl and coarsely grate the apple directly into the juice. Toss well to combine. Finely shred the white and red cabbage, coarsely grate the kohlrabi and the carrots, and then add all the vegetables, along with the sultanas and caraway seeds, to the bowl containing the apple and lemon juice. In a separate bowl, whisk together all the dressing ingredients, taste the dressing, and adjust the seasoning if necessary (this dressing needs quite a lot of salt). Add just enough dressing (dollop by dollop) to the salad to lightly coat each individual shred: the salad should not be swimming in its dressing. Toss well and serve immediately.

Serves 4-6 as a side salad.

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Wasabi and Avocado Potato Salad with Seared Sesame Tuna Steaks

Nose-nuking wasabi paste and gentle, buttery avocado are unlikely bedfellows, I admit. But when combined in a creamy dressing and poured over freshly boiled and cubed spuds, they... well, I suppose they come together. With fireworks and a celestial choir.

I am a devoted fan of potato salad: not the yellow, greasy Sixties version, but a lighter, brighter breed of salad, made with unskinned boiled baby potatoes and dressed with a mixture of thick white yoghurt, good mayonnaise, lemon juice, mint, parsley, chives, onion and the slightest twang of garlic.

Because I was planning to serve some lovely fresh tuna steaks for supper, I thought I'd add wasabi paste to the dressing. It tasted stingingly good, but the dressing wasn't the very pale pistachio-green I'd hoped for , so I stirred in the finely mashed flesh of a ripe and voluptuous avocado. To my surprise, the delicate taste of avocado gave the aggressive wasabi flavour a good punch on the nose - and the result was a tie.

The ingredients for the dressing should be whisked together just minutes before you serve this dish. The first time I made this salad, I concocted the dressing before I put the potatoes on to boil, and 45 minutes later I found it had turned from a creamy wobble into a thin, bubbly liquid. Why the mixture liquefied, I don't know, but it had something to do with the wasabi and the avocado. Maybe their knees just turned to water?

Wasabi and Avocado Potato Salad with Seared Sesame Tuna Steaks

18 small new potatoes (or 8 waxy, thin-skinned young potatoes)
1 T (15 ml) salt
2 ripe avocados

For the dressing:
1/2 an onion, peeled and very finely chopped or grated
the juice of 1 lemon
3/4 cup (180 ml) good mayonnaise (such as Hellman's, or home-made)
3/4 cup (180 ml) thick plain white yoghurt
1 clove fresh garlic, peeled and crushed
1 - 2 t (5- 10 ml) wasabi paste, to taste
1 ripe avocado
a dash of Tabasco sauce (optional)
a handful of finely snipped fresh chives
salt and freshly milled black pepper

For the tuna steaks:

4 fresh tuna steaks
6 T white sesame seeds (or a combination of sesame and shelled pumpkin seeds)
3 T (45 ml) olive oil or vegetable oil
salt and milled black pepper

Put the potatoes into a big pot and cover with water. Add the salt and bring to the boil. Boil for about 30 minutes (depending on the size of the spuds) or until they are quite tender, but not splitting.

While the potatoes are cooking, combine the grated onion and the lemon juice in a small bowl, and set aside (the lemon juice will take the sting out of the onions).

Sprinkle the sesame seeds onto a plate. Press the tuna steaks, top and bottom, into the sesame seeds, so that both sides are well coated. Put the steaks onto a big plate, in a single layer, cover with tightly with cling-film, and press down with the palm of your hand so that the seeds adhere to the surface of the steaks. Place in the fridge.

Remove the potatoes from the heat, drain in a colander and set aside to cool while you make the dressing and cook the tuna steaks.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and, when it's very hot, add the tuna steaks. You may need to do this in two batches, if the steaks are bigger than the palm of your hand. Cook for 2-3 minutes on one side (you'll see, by observing the edges of the steaks, the flesh turning opaque as it comes into contact with the heat). When the opacity has crept two or three millimetres up, flip the steaks over and cook for a few more minutes. I like tuna with a lovely rare, rosy centre - that is, virtually raw inside - but feel free to cook the tuna right through if you'd like it that way. Remove the tuna steaks from the heat and set aside to rest.

Cut the warm cooked potatoes into chunks (or leave them whole if they're tiny baby ones). Skin the avocados, cut them into cubes, and sprinkle with a little fresh lemon juice to prevent them browning.

Now make the dressing. Put the onion and lemon-juice mixture into a big bowl. Using a wire whisk, beat in all the remaining ingredients, except for the chives. (Wasabi paste comes in various degrees of nose-blasting fierceness, so I suggest you add a teaspoon to start, and add more to taste). Check the seasoning, adding more salt and pepper if necessary, and then tip the potato and avocado cubes into the dressing. Toss very lightly to combine. Tip into a salad bowl and scatter with the finely snipped chives.

Using a very sharp knife, cut the tuna steaks into slices, and arrange around the edges of the potato salad.

Serve immediately.

Serves 4-6 Print Friendly

Shredded Cabbage Salad with Chilli-Lime Dressing, Crunchy Noodles and Refried Peanuts

A scrumptious, easy recipe tends to fly around the world as swiftly as a bald-faced lie*, but sometimes passing recipes around is a bit like playing Broken Telephones. By the time a fabulous formula falls into the inbox of the ten thousandth cook who's received it, the recipe - and the tale behind it - has lost something in translation.

Consider the Neiman-Marcus Cookie recipe (now an infamous Internet urban legend), the Ultimate Fruit Cake Recipe, and the repulsive Bacon Explosion.

This recipe, for a cool shredded-cabbage salad topped with crunchy fried Heinz two-minute noodles, did the rounds two or three years ago, and was called, for some reason I cannot figure out, 'Hong Kong Salad'. I first tasted it at a dinner at my friend Margie's house, and it was so fresh, crunchy and unusual that I begged her to email me the recipe.

Which she had lost, so she typed it up from memory, as had the last five thousand cooks before her. And then I lost the recipe too, so I made up my own version, and of course it just didn't taste the same. Plus, we couldn't finish the bowl: it was lovely eaten fresh, but by the next morning it had become the Soggy Leftover No One Wants to Eat.

I remembered this recipe today as I was staring glumly into the much-depleted vegetable drawer of my fridge, trying to find something nice to make for supper. My choice were: two carrots as wizened as goblins' fingers, five weeping cherry tomatoes, a pack of mange-tout, a bunch of fresh coriander, and two crisp little baby cabbages.

The cabbages eagerly held up their leaves, and I decided to try to recreate the recipe, and to improve on it.

The original salad, I seem to recall, had a dressing that involved using the little foiled pack of spices that comes with a block of 'Oriental' Heinz two-minute noodles. My cupboard is bulging with instant noodles - I have two teenage sons - but I draw the line at actually eating ancient spice-dust.

Instead, I raided one of my favourite new cookbooks, the brilliant Reuben Cooks: Food is Time Travel, and adapted Reuben Riffel's chilli-lime dressing.

This salad should be assembled at the very last minute, so its toppings are piping hot and crunchy.

Shredded Cabbage Salad with Chilli-Lime Dressing, Crunchy Noodles and Refried Peanuts

For the chilli-lime dressing:
1 fresh green chilli, seeds removed and very finely chopped (or more, to taste)
1 fresh red chilli, seeds removed and very finely chopped
3 T (45 ml) white caster sugar
3 T (45 ml) Thai fish sauce
3 T (45 ml) Chinese rice wine vinegar
4 T (60 ml) freshly squeezed lime juice (lemon juice will do)

For the salad:
2 baby cabbages (or half a big cabbage)
1 punnet (about 2 cups) sugarsnap peas or snow peas ( (mange-tout)
a handful of chopped fresh coriander (cilantro or dhania)

For the garnish:
1/2 cup (125 ml) sunflower or vegetable oil
1 packet of two-minute noodles (that is, one block)
1/4 cup (60 ml) peanuts (optional)

First make the dressing. Put the green and red chillies, the sugar, the fish sauce and the rice vinegar into a saucepan. Set over a high heat and bring to the boil. Boil for one minute, then remove from the heat and set aside to cool to room temperature. Stir in the lime or lemon juice and set aside.

Halve the baby cabbages vertically and cut a triangular notch to remove the white stalky bits. Using a mandolin or a razor-sharp knife, cut the cabbage into very fine shreds. Make a stack of peas and cut them, on a sharp diagonal, into fine slices. Put the cabbage, the peas and the coriander into a salad bowl and toss well.

Ten minutes before you serve the salad, heat the oil in a small saucepan. Put a few pieces of absorbent kitchen paper on a plate. When the oil is good and hot roughly crumble the block of noodles into the oil, and fry for 30 seconds or two, or until just beginning to change colour. (**see important note, below) Remove from the oil with a slotted spoon, shake well, and tip onto the kitchen paper to drain. Now put the peanuts into the hot oil and fry for about 30 seconds and then remove, before they change colour, and drain on the kitchen paper.

Pour the dressing over the salad and toss well. Scatter the hot, crispy noodles and peanuts over the salad, and serve immediately.

Serves six, as a starter or side dish.

* "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on." - attributed to Winston Churchill.

** You can test whether the oil is hot enough by dropping a shred of dried noodle into it. If the oil bubbles energetically around the bit of noodle, and it turns golden within 15 seconds, the oil is hot enough. Remove the noodles and the peanuts before they turn golden brown, as they carry on browning after you've taken them out of the oil. Print Friendly