Sweet, Tangy, Summery

My kitchen overfloweth with recipes for you, sweet blog readers!  I hardly know where to begin.  I thought we could go in alphabetical order, so for today, C is for Cabbage.

Discovering cabbage has been one of my great food moments in recent history.  I didn’t grow up eating cabbage, and I was always very suspicious of coleslaw with its globs of spooky mayonnaise and mysterious slivered cabbage.  Even today I don’t care much for creamy coleslaws, but a cabbage salad dressed with great olive oil and citrus?  Yes please!

I have learned that I love raw cabbage salads.  I love how crisp and fresh they taste.  Prepping cabbage is one of my favorite kitchen tasks; I just love how the cabbage falls into neat crinkled slices with a few strokes of the knife.  Now that we know what a frugal woman I am, I will admit that the price of cabbage is pretty attractive too—usually it’s about 69 cents a pound.  It’s like the stores are practically begging you: please, take our cabbage home with you!  Please!  To which I answer, “Yes, sir!  I’ll do it!”

I like to keep things pretty simple with my cabbage salads.  Because I usually think of them as supporting players for a richer meal component, I don’t think they need to be too fancy.  My newest cabbage salad does, however, call for a fancy olive oil.  A tangerine olive oil, in fact.  I’m reviewing Pasolivo’s extra-virgin olive oil as part of Project Olive Oil, and when I placed my order, I could not resist ordering one of their specialty infused oils along with a bottle of regular olive oil.  I had never tried an infused olive oil, and my interest was piqued.  Also, I figured if I’m going to pay twelve bucks in shipping, I’d better get my money’s worth, so not only did I order two bottles of oil for myself, I bought a bottle to give to Matt for his birthday.  He liked it!

The tangerine olive oil, along with a generous squirt of citrus juice, is used to dress a few cups of cabbage ribbons and half a diced green apple.  Sprinkle on some salt, toss everything together, and voila!  A sweet, tangy, summery salad of green on green.  The cabbage is crisp and earthy, the apple sweet and crunchy, the oil rich and fresh.  A final selling point on this salad is that it keeps well.  In fact, when I ate it, deskbound at work, as leftovers from the previous night’s dinner, the flavor was improved after a night in the fridge.  Now that’s impressive.  And delicious.

Cabbage Salad with Green Apples and Citrus

Serves 2

2 cups of sliced green cabbage

1/2 green apple, cored and diced (about 1/2 cup)

1/2 tbsp. tangerine-infused olive oil, such as Pasolivo’s

1/4 of a lime or 1/8 of a regular lemon (in wedge form, please)

Sprinkle of salt

1)  Place all of the ingredients except the citrus fruit and salt in a medium-sized mixing bowl.  Toss vigorously to lightly coat the cabbage and apple with oil.  Squeeze the citrus wedge over the salad, picking out any seeds that may fall into the bowl.  Toss again.

2)  Sprinkle a tiny bit of salt over the salad and toss again.  A little bit of salt highlights the other flavors, but be careful not to add too much or the salad will taste salty, which is not the goal here.  Serve.