For many years I didn’t like coleslaw… it had a strange and to me bitter taste, a sort of metallic nastiness that lingered, an unpleasant sourness that seemed to lodge in my taste-buds and at the back of my throat… I presumed it was the combination of otherwise delicious ingredients. I love raw carrots (better than cooked) and I like sliced cabbage in salad, and I like onions; I also like mayonnaise,, so I thought that it must be some perhaps chemical reaction when they were all mixed together.
One day I was somewhere… and I can’t remember where, and I was given a jacket potato with coleslaw… t must have been at someone’s house because I felt obliged through politeness to have a little attempt to eat at least a little of the coleslaw… well, it was yummy! It was a revelation, and when I enquired where my host had bought it the answer was, she had made it!
So there we are, I now like coleslaw and often make it at home… today I had a pointy cabbage in my Riverford Organic vegetable box, so thought I would make a coleslaw along with the nice young carrots which were also in my box. I cut the ‘cabbage’ in half… and it was a pointy cauliflower! I had a yen for coleslaw now, so I chopped up the half of cauli, and added it to the grated carrots and finely chopped onion, added a mixture of crème fraiche and mayonnaise… and voilá, cauli-slaw!
I began to wonder about the origin of the word, thinking maybe it was German… in fact it comes from the Dutch, kool, meaning cabbage, and sla, meaning salad!
Lois Elsden 