Hi everyone! I had mentioned before that although my cabbage did grow, I probably won’t be planting any more cabbage plants. In a garden the size of the one I’m growing in the lanai, a cabbage plant just takes up too much valuable real estate.
You really only get one head out of each plant, and the head I grew only got to be 4-5 inches. It looks more like a really large brussels sprout, instead of a head of cabbage. But I am determined to use it. For tonight’s dinner, I’ll just whip up a quick and easy coleslaw.
I don’t like my coleslaw to be too sweet, so I don’t use any sugar in the dressing. I add plenty of carrots, which I think gives it enough sweetness. However, I do really like my coleslaw tangy, so I add more vinegar that most people do. You can always play around with the proportions, but here is my go-to recipe:
Ingredients for the slaw
3 parts cabbage
1 part carrots
Ingredients for the dressing
¼ cup mayonnaise
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste (I put use salt and pepper shakers and put in 2 shakes of salt and 1 of pepper to start)
For this slaw, since I’m using a fresh head of cabbage, I thinly slice it into julienne-like slices. Sometimes I add a little red cabbage for color, but I didn’t grow any, so I’m not using it this time. The purple cabbage adds great color, but it really doesn’t change the taste or texture. You can either buy a fresh head of cabbage and fresh carrots and slice them up yourself, or you can buy a bag of already shredded cabbage to use. Many bags of pre-shredded slaw already include the carrots and purple cabbage, and sometimes broccoli. That cuts the prep time down to practically nothing, and you don’t have to buy all the individual ingredients.
When I use full-size carrots, I grate them in a large sized grater to get the size I want, but since I only have baby carrots on hand, I just thinly slice them the long way in the same julienne-like style I cut the cabbage in. The carrots add a lot of nice color, and as I said before, they add enough sweetness that you don’t need to put any sugar in the dressing.
I don’t know how much cabbage you will get from your head of cabbage, since the heads are different sizes, so I thought it would be easier to tell you the proportions I use. I prefer a 3:1 ratio. For tonight’s coleslaw, I got about 1 ½ cups of cabbage, so I added ½ cup of carrots. If I had been working with 3 cups of cabbage, I would have added in another cup of carrots.
For the dressing, I put ¼ cup of mayonnaise and 3 tbsp of red wine vinegar into a small bowl and whisk it until its combined and the lumps have disappeared. This will probably give me more dressing than I need tonight, so I’ll keep it in the fridge for a later salad.
I pour a little of the dressing on the slaw and stir until the cabbage and carrots are lightly coated. The dressing is tart and tangy, but the creaminess of the mayonnaise balances it out nicely and works well with the crunchiness of the vegetables. And the entire salad took about 15 minutes from start to finish!
