28 October 2011

Polish Cabbage Salad


I was flipping through an old diary of mine the other day and found some food-related notes I'd taken while travelling through Poland a few years ago.  I take notes if I eat out and discover something amazing -- this has happened more in Eastern Europe than anywhere else* -- and two salads I ate at Vega (the site's in Polish) really caught my eye.  If you are a long-time follower of my blog, you will not be surprised that this is because they had cabbage** in them.

There were two kinds, a white cabbage one and a red cabbage one.  In both cases, the cabbage had been boiled or steamed and then chilled (clever!).  I have done a little investigation since then and seen similar recipes where the cabbage is raw that involve salt-wilting the cabbage and then massaging it into suppleness.

White cabbage, parsley, shredded carrots, sunflower seeds, dill, vinegar, and oil.
Red cabbage, cilantro, sunflower seeds, hot pepper, vinegar, and oil.

You can mix and match ingredients with these guys, too.  And add beets!  Yesterday, I made the salad photographed above and called it 'purple monster salad.' My 3 year old could not get enough!


*  The most amazing thing I ever ate in a restaurant was in Lithiuania -- it was this hot and sour tomato soup with pickles and black olives.  I am pretty good at replicating it, but it's so hard to find unsweetened pickles here (let alone pickles without food colouring), I haven't been able to blog about it yet.  Anyway, the soup was so good, I went back to the restaurant again for more later that day!

**  By the way, I've added a cabbage tag to all my cabbagey posts now, since I post about cabbage so often, so you can see all my cabbage-related posts at once.

1 comment:

  1. This is why it's important to write stuff down! It's so easy to forget about that wonderful x that you had that time.

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