A smooth head of cabbage is much more useful, I think, than a bag of leaves as a quick salad option. With just a bit of shredding, salt and a few scrunches, a quarter of a cabbage becomes a voluminous and bright slaw. It is only slightly more work to pull out the box grater to add a coarsely grated carrot, apple or small amount of fresh horseradish to the shredded heap. Alternatively (and this is a suggestion from the wonderful Margaret Costa), chopped dried apricots, walnut halves and orange segments are extremely nice in a cabbage salad, maybe dressed with olive oil, red-wine vinegar, honey and lemon zest.
The Macedonian-British writer Irina Janakievska, meanwhile, has introduced me to the pleasure of grated beetroot with a mass of salted cabbage. What’s more (and quite unlike the last of the leaves meeting their rapid and slimy end in a bag), the remaining three-quarters of the cabbage do just that: they remain healthy for days, weeks even. So much so that I am beginning to think of smooth cabbages, both red and white, as the Highlanders of vegetables.
