There are two dishes that guarantee I am eating cruciferous vegetables and particularly white cabbage without gusto and without complaint.
One is Mexican Tacos with chopped cabbage slaw.
Two is the Japanese cabbage salad in a Japanese restaurant.
Both elevate white cabbage to something exotic and delicious, one with lime and salt and the other with a deeper aromatic umami flavour.
I wanted to recreate the salty, tangy sesame taste of Japanese cabbage salad at home and set about pulling the flavours together.
The humble cabbage is a superfood for midlife women as it contains a compound that helps to eliminate excess estrogen from the body. It is helpful to have in your mind, multiple ways that you enjoy cruciferous vegetables, ready for when you notice an uptick in hot flashes in your body and for that last hoorah of excess estrogen many women describe right before they enter full menopause.
So easy is this recipe that it is almost not a recipe at all! It relies on store cupboard aromatics, vinegars an oils to pull together the sweet, salty, sour punch to the taste buds found in this restaurant salad.
It was a cold February day and I chose to serve my Japanese cabbage salad with a small cutlet of local pork, beaten thin with a rolling pin and breaded by dipping in a beaten egg and Panko breadcrumbs. I fried my cutlet in avocado oil to make Tonkatsu pork and cabbage salad and served white rice and a small bowl of miso soup as a side.
This recipe is as much about pleasure as it is about the health benefits of cruciferous vegetables in supporting the elimination of excess estrogen for midlife women. It is about encouraging you to eat cabbage and to bring the pleasure of something you loved in a restaurant back into your home.
Ingredients
1/2 medium white cabbage sliced thinly
3 tbsp mayonnaise (Japanese kewpie mayonnaise gets you extra points!)
1 tbsp Apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp Maple syrup
2 tsp Tamari soya sauce
2tsp toasted sesame oil
2tsp Mirin (optional)
Instructions
Add all of the ingredients except the cabbage to a large bowl and whisk together to form a highly flavourful mayonnaise
Add the cabbage and combine to make a Japanese slaw.
Serve with Fried chicken or pork and rice.