Winter Salads

We are entering the darkest days of winter as we come to the end of the present lockdown and head for an uncertain Christmas - after which January might see us worrying about yet more restrictions. Not the most jolly way of starting a food article, but if you are a fighter or one of those half-glass-full-instead-of-empty sort of people, you’ll be planning your own personal counter-attack in the war against doom and gloom. 

One easy way to do that is to add sunshine and zest to your diet. Indeed, it’s a wise thing to do every winter because consuming lively raw foodstuffs, such as those found in dishes like a daily salad, can really make a difference to our health and our immune systems. 

Of course, supermarkets sell imported lettuces and tomatoes, which are fine in their own way - but things grown under plastic thousands of miles away won’t necessarily have that oomph and zing that you need to freshen your palate and you have to wonder about the environmental cost of flying in bulk foods by airliner. However, there are plenty of ways to enliven diets with lighter brighter foods without wrecking the planet. 

And by the way, please don’t get me wrong: I absolutely love the heavy soups, stews, casseroles and roasts of wintertime - but why not have, say, a dish of freshly made coleslaw on the side?

Slaws are a style of winter salads that you will find in cuisines across Europe and beyond.  The classic coleslaw that we know so well is based on a creamy or mayonnaise-based dressing, but there are countless other versions dressed with vinaigrette and other types of edible lubrication. Slaw comes from the Dutch sla, short for salad, but travel next door to Germany and you will find a similar dish called Krautsalat, which includes apples and onions. 

There are literally thousands of ways of creating fresh-tasting, sparkling, crunchy winter salads without having to rely on a lettuce which has seen the insides of a Boeing 747 cargo plane.  

Apart from various types of cabbage, plenty of veg from the winter root crop are capable of starring in a salad.  Many rely on the practice of grating - but it is one that rather “grates” on me, if you’ll forgive the pun. Julienning is far superior. By which I mean, cutting root vegetables into crunchy little matchsticks… It seems to maintain more of the original sense of, say, a humble carrot, than the act of grating. The same applies to a beetroot, or a hunk of earthy celeriac.

Perhaps that is why you will often find julienned vegetables in the cuisines of people who really care about food. The French, for example - who presumably invented the word - make a great song and dance about their remoulade: that pungent, creamy, mustardy winter celeriac salad that you will see being sold in delicatessen and charcuteries across that large and productive country.

Remoulade is delicious and also very easy to make. The usual way of avoiding all the knife work involved with julienning is to use a mandolin - all well and good in its own way, but they are a faff to wash and of course they are notorious when it comes to slicing into careless fingers. Do yourself a favour if you haven’t already got one and buy a little handheld julienning device. They look like those Swiss vegetable peelers, but have a little row of steel teeth beneath the cutting bar. Simply pull the tool along a carrot (or across the creamy white fresh of a peeled celeriac root) and you will instantly see an impressive nest of julienne strips piling up as the result. Making enough for a two-portion salad is the work of seconds. 

It’s not just remoulade that gets made in my house at this time of year. Years ago I was island-hopping off the coast of Thailand when I was served, in a jungle hut, with the best salad I have ever eaten. It consisted mainly of julienne vegetables, but was helped out with a handful of savoury smoked, dried, fish flakes – not common ingredient to be found in Westcountry shops, but easily obtainable of the Internet in the form of Dashi No Moto, the most popular of Japanese stocks. This bonito flavoured powder is used in a wide variety of dishes - most famously miso soup - but can be sprinkled onto a salad where it will mix with the citrus dressing to give a smoky taste.

The salad also contained bean shoots which are now available in all British supermarkets and which really do add an amazing punch of raw goodness to any salad. But here’s a tip: as the thin white sprouts age in the bag their little roots and leaves turn increasingly yellow and brown. This will add an unwelcome bitterness if they’re to be eaten raw - so spend a few minutes pulling off the offending ends with your fingers to produce pure white shoots.

Bean sprouts are also fabulous in stir-fries which - when you think about it - are really hot salads. The careful finger pulling process is not quite so necessary here as cooking sweeten the sprouts anyway, but it’s still best to get rid of as many brown ends as you can. For stir fries I do this by washing the bean sprouts with much vigour in a salad spinner, which I then revolved at the speed of a steam engine… This process will get rid of three quarters of the unwanted bitter ends.  

There was something about that Thai salad… It was somehow life re-affirming. It reached parts of my inner spirit that I hardly knew existed. I've been trying to emulate it ever since. Not always successfully. In fact, it’s taken me years to evolve my version of the dish.

Midwinter Salad for Two

I’m not going to be exacting here - simply julienne enough veg to make a mix that looks balanced and is to your taste. 

3 carrots

half a celeriac root

half a cucumber

handful of washed bean sprouts

1 shallot

garlic clove

small thumb of ginger

2 limes (zest of one finely grated, and juice of both)

a dash of good oil (your choice, today I used a light truffle infused olive oil)

1 sachet of Dashi No Moto (available on the Internet)

squeeze of wasabi paste

pinch of sea salt and freshly ground white pepper

handful of cashews, roughly chopped

Peel carrots and the celeriac and wash half a cucumber. Julienne all three (only go down to the central seed core in the cucumber, then turn it over and do the other side until you are left only with the seeds which you discard). 

Immediately toss the julienne strips in a bowl with the lime juice and zest. Add the finely chopped shallot and bean sprouts and, using a micro-grater, add the garlic and ginger paste - and also the sachet of Dashi No Moto, plus the oil. 

In the meantime heat the chopped cashews in dry pan - be careful not to burn them as they can turn from gold to black quickly. Let them rest on a plate for 10 minutes, which helps the cashews to crisp. Toss the whole lot together adding the wasabi paste and seasoning to taste.

Options: you can do different things with this basic zing-filled salad - for quick lunch I’ll often bung in a can of tuna, a few dry-fried bacon pieces, or a selection of other dry roasted nuts (chopped walnuts or almonds) and seeds. It also makes a perfect accompaniment for something simple like hot-smoked chicken or a fast fried fillet of sea-bass that’s been marinaded in garlic and ginger. If you’ve still mint in the garden ,and it will take this basic dish into another stratosphere.