Health Food Salad

Health Food Salad

I am giving you a post Thanksgiving recipe today, a salad you may want to eat after the glorious overindulgence in traditional Thanksgiving sides and desserts. I know I will be serving it. You could even toss in some leftover turkey to make it a whole meal. I think the folks over at Fiesta Friday may want to tag it. Fiesta Friday is hosted by Angie, it’s Fiesta Friday #458 this week. Come on over and plan your menus for the holidays, decorate your home, or keep the kids busy with activities or baking.

This is another recipe from salad freak. You are going to be seeing more great recipes from this book. My version, as usual, has some changes as not all the ingredients were available. But it is definitely true to the spirit of the recipe. I added a small handful of shredded pecorino which was not in the book, leave it out for a vegan version.

Adding the cheese was inspired by a recipe in Molly Wizenberg’s book A Homemade Life. She has a very simple but delicious Red Cabbage Salad with Lemon and Black Pepper which couldn’t be easier. Here it is:

In a small bowl whisk together 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, 1/2 teaspoon of grated garlic, 1/8 teaspoon of kosher salt. Very finely (essential) shred about 1-1/2 lbs of cored red cabbage. Discard any with white cores. Toss the cabbage in a bowl with a large spoonful or two of the dressing. Add the Parmesan and toss again. Add a generous grind of fresh pepper. Taste and add more dressing or salt and pepper.

Anyway, on to the current version of this cabbage salad.

I used the fine blade of my food processor to shredd the cored cabbage, and the shredding blade for the carrots. You could certainly do this with a knife (a bread knife might be easier for the cabbage) and the large shredding side of a box grater.

Feel free to improvise here with whatever is in your fridge. Thinly sliced fennel would be good, celery as well.

Health Food Salad

Health Food Salad

Ingredients:

1 small head of red cabbage
4 carrots, peeled
2 large handfuls of sprouts, any kind you find. I used sunflower and pea shoots, but radish, lentils or alfalfa would all be fine.
1 lemon
1 cup of raisins (I used a mix of golden and black currents because of was out of the dark ones…much to my last minute surprise)
1 cup of roasted shelled sunflower seeds (I think pumpkin seeds would also be delicious)
1/4 cup of hemp seeds (I didn’t have any and left them out)
1 tablespoon of poppy seeds
1/2 cup of shredded Parmesan (leave out for a vegan version)
Extra virgin olive oil
Kosher salt

Method:

Core the cabbage and shave it thinly into a large bowl. Grate the carrots into the same bowl.
Toss in the sprouts, raisins, sunflower seeds, poppy seeds and hemp seeds, if using. Mix it all up and then add a large pinch of salt, a glug of olive oil and the juice of half the lemon. Taste and add more lemon juice, salt, Parmesan or olive oil if needed.

This salad keeps incredibly well and was still delicious the next night for dinner with some added rotisserie chicken.