A Sweet & Crunchy Cabbage Salad for the Buckets
(With apologies to Vanessa)
Here are a couple of recipes inspired by the contributions to the season’s pot luck supper made by Dr Allie Pino and Vanessa Baca. The quotes below are taken from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, London: Puffin (2000).
Don’t forget to listen to the episode that inspired these recipes. You can find it here.
‘The only meals they could afford were bread and margarine for breakfast, boiled potatoes and cabbage for lunch and cabbage soup for supper. […]
Charlie felt it worst of all. […] He desperately wanted something more filling and satisfying than cabbage and cabbage soup. The one thing he longed for more than anything else was…CHOCOLATE.’
There is no chocolate in this slaw style salad but it is more exciting and sustaining than another bowl of watery cabbage soup!
Ingredients - Serves 2 as a main for 4 as a side
Salad
2 tbsp natural greek yogurt
2 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tsp honey
125g red or white cabbage
125g carrot
100g fresh pineapple take from a whole fresh fruit - see below (although you could by pre-prepared pineapple, even tinned at a push).
1½ tbsp snipped chives
Salt and pepper to season
Topping
50g feta, crumbled,
20g walnuts, coarsely chopped
20g almonds, coarsely chopped
1 tbsp dried cranberries
1 tbsp raisins
½ tbsp snipped chives
Method
To make the dressing mix the yogurt, mayonnaise, lemon juice and honey in a large bowl.
Finely shred the cabbage. Peel and coarsely grate the carrot. Set aside for a moment while you prepare the pineapple.
Cut the pineapple in half lengthways throw the stalk at the top of the fruit. Use a sharp knife to remove the fruit from the skin, leaving the latter intact, so that you have two pineapple ‘bowls’. You only need 100g for this recipe which should be finely diced. Save the rest to eat or use in smoothies. You could of course just buy pre-prepared pineapple, even use tinned at a push, but you would be sacrificing the kitsch presentation.
Add the cabbage, carrot and pineapple to the dressing along with the snipped chives and a little seasoning. Mix thoroughly until the vegetables and fruit and lightly coated.
To make the topping, combine all of the ingredients.
To serve, spoon the salad back into the pineapple ‘bowls’ (or onto a platter) Scatter the feta topping on top of the salad before serving.
Blueberry, Chocolate and Hazelnut Muffins
Especially for naughty girls
‘Everybody was staring at Violet. And what a terrible, peculiar sight she was! Her face and hands and legs and neck, in fact the skin all over her body, as well as her great big mop of curly hair had turned a brilliant, purplish-blue, the colour of blueberry juice!’
Inspired by Vanessa’s blueberry, chocolate and ‘bad’ nut scones (although I prefer muffins). Perfect for well behaved people as well as naughty ones. Bad nuts optional, obviously – just don’t tell the squirrels if you use good ones!
Ingredients - Makes 12
75g unsalted butter, melted & cooled slightly
200g buttermilk
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g self raising flour
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
80g caster sugar
Pinch of salt
40g chopped roasted hazelnuts
50g chocolate chips (I used dark but you could use milk or white chocolate instead)
110g fresh blueberries
Topping
25g chopped roasted hazelnuts mixed with ¼ tsp fine sea salt (optional)
12 hole muffin tin lined paper muffin cases
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 200℃/180℃ fan.
Combine the melted butter, buttermilk, egg and vanilla extract in a jug
Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, sugar and salt into a bowl.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined then stir in 40g chopped roasted hazelnuts, chocolate chips and blueberries. Continue to mix until these are incorporated into the batter but don’t over mix it.
Divide the muffin mixture equally between the 12 cases. Scatter a few of the salted nuts over the top of each muffin then bake for 20 minutes. Remove the cases from the tin then allow to cool on a baking rack before serving.
‘My goodness, she is a bad nut after all’ said Mr Wonka. ‘Her head must have sounded quite hollow.’