Tuesday 16 April 2013

Raw Cauliflower Salad with Watercress


From Salades, Damien Pignolet, Lantern, 2010.

Raw cauliflower is not exactly a favourite of mine. I do enjoy it cooked but I find that raw it is a bland, rather tedious vegetable to eat. Nevertheless, I thought I’d give it another try in this salad.


The cauliflower, sufficient for the two of us, was broken into florets and soaked for about 10 minutes in cold water. After this they went into a pot of boiling salted water. The recipe says for 30 seconds; I left it there for a minute to make sure and because of my edginess about it raw. It then went into cold water again to halt the cooking.

An apple was peeled, cored, thinly sliced and mixed with the juice of a half a lemon.


Two stalks of celery from the centre of the bunch were sliced. Two spring onions were sliced thinly. Two eggs were boiled until hard.

The cauliflower, apple, celery and spring onions were placed in a bowl with some chopped parsley.

A dressing was made with a teaspoon Dijon mustard, salt and pepper, cider vinegar, extra virgin olive oil and a little walnut oil. This was not the dressing from the recipe, which had a coddled egg beaten into it; I decided against the egg.

The dressing was poured over the vegetables that were then gently tossed. When served, watercress leaves and rocket leaves were added.  The boiled eggs were shelled, quartered and added on top. A little smoked paprika was sprinkled over.

The crunch in this salad was really evident—it was all crunch that had to be chewed and chewed.  The flavours were there, though somewhat delicate. I am still not totally convinced about cauliflower eaten raw.

Taste: ✔✔
Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔

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