I did not look for a reason to post this recipe but I was almost provoked to do it when I talked to my cousin living in Germany. She is a very good cook, although her cuisine is more of a traditional, country style, often German or Polish. She generally favors fish, lamb, and salads.
In addition to being a good cook she is totally obsessed with healthy food. All she eats has to be organic and ecological and, most importantly, healthy. Just to give you a few examples, she buys only organic food in Germany, brings gallons of organic oil from the Balkans, imports organic apples and jars of organic beet salad from Poland, bakes her own whole-grain organic bread, and she even buys organic tuna, although I am not sure how it can be determined what is organic or not in the deep waters of the ocean.
She knows that I love to cook and my cuisine is on the light and healthy side, but each time we talk, she is very concerned about us in America eating very unhealthy stuff. During our conversation she examined me what we had for dinner. Everything seemed to be fine until I got to arugula salad with nuts and pumpkin seeds. "You are not supposed to eat green salads at winter!" she almost screamed. "They are full of pesticide, artificially grown without sun! You can eat only Belgian endive (as it grows in dark places) and cabbage."
My arguments that I buy only organic salads cultivated in the regions where there is always sun and mild climate, did not convince her. Instead, she gave me a recipe for red cabbage salad with sunflower seeds. But I decided that mine, which in fact I prepare in winter quite often, is more interesting. So, for all the health reasons, which indicate that in winter you should eat mostly cabbage, here is the very wintery red cabbage salad.
Fancy Red Cabbage Salad
(Serves four)
Ingredients:
1/2 medium red cabbage(4-5 cups, if shredded),
2-3 celery sticks,
10-12 dried apricots,
4 tbsp slivered, roasted almonds,
1 tbsp lemon juice,
1 glass of white wine,
1 tsp sugar,
1/2 cup mayonnaise,
1 tsp salt.
Preparation:
1. Shred cabbage finely. Put it in a large bowl. Add salt, mix, and set aside for 30 minutes.
2. Place dried apricots in a medium bowl and cover with wine. Let them soak for 30 minutes.
3. Cut celery into thin slices and add them to cabbage.
4. Drain apricots from wine (but keep the remaining wine) and cut into thin slices. Add to cabbage.
5. In a medium bowl mix the remaining wine with sugar, lemon juice, and mayonnaise. Add to the cabbage and mix all the ingredients. Throw in roasted almond, mix, and set aside for 15 minutes to marinate all the ingredients.
Serve with cold cuts, meats, or just alone with breads.
