Roasted Sweet Potato & Purple Cabbage Salad
This week's Veg Box Inspiration & what to cook + Cheesy Baked Sicilian Cauliflower + Buttery Sweetcorn With Paprika & Lime
As a family, we are quite good at eating our quota of vegetables every week. But we often get stuck in a rut. While cauliflower and mushrooms are cooked on a regular basis and every dish seems to be amplified by tomatoes, carrots, leek and spinach; some gorgeous and highly nutritious vegetables fall through the cracks.
This year I’ve set myself a goal. Pick two vegetables every week that we don’t usually cook or eat and create a fabulous recipe with them that will make them invaluable to our weekly cooking roster.
A few weeks ago, the vegetable lottery picked these two beauties - Sweet potato and red cabbage. You might think that they make an unlikely pair but they were made for each other. I thought about Japanese cooking and how they use a lot of sweet potatoes and a lot of cabbage (albeit, green cabbage). That became the basis for this salad.
It is creamy, it has freshness and crunch and a dressing I could just spoon into my mouth. Every time, I make this salad; I can’t stop eating it. I’ve made it 5 times in the last 2 weeks. I definitely think it is the dressing! Regardless, we are now eating more sweet potato and red cabbage every week than we did before. And that is a win! The recipe is a bit further down, but first, let’s talk about my veg box this week.
This week’s Veg Box & Recipe Ideas
When I pick produce for my weekly veg box, one of the most important criteria is – colour. With green making up the bulk of the veggies, I always make sure I’ve got plenty of reds, oranges and yellow for all the carotenoids, lycopene and lutein. And finally, something purple for all the anthocyanins.
This autumnal box is packed with brassicas, cherry tomatoes, Shepard avocados, sweetcorn, lots of herbs, roots and alliums.
My love affair with cauliflower knows no bounds and I have a very special bonus cheesy golden-baked cauliflower recipe for you today that I whipped up last week. Along with a buttery corn recipe that I cook quite often.
11 Things To Cook With This Veg Box
Cauliflower – It was exciting to find a bright yellow head of cauliflower that was almost orange. I had never seen one in person before, but I’ve read about them. These were first discovered in Canada and became regular at farmer’s markets after years of crossbreeding. Called “Cheddar” Cauliflower, these are higher in beta carotene and have more vitamin A than their white counterparts.
I found the florets to be ever so slightly sweeter. And when cooked, they go from a mustard-orange to a bright, summery yellow, almost like bathing them in turmeric. This recipe for a cheesy, briney, semi-baked cauliflower does the yellow florets complete justice. I highly recommend you make it right away.
