Salad Days: Coleslaw of cabbage, radishes and grapes

The starting point for a dish in my kitchen is often as random as somebody arriving at the front gate with a bag of radishes she’s just picked from her garden. Which is precisely how this variation on a coleslaw came about.

Rika Featherstone-Hough (no, you pronounce it Fanshaw) has green fingers of note. Everything grows abundantly in her back garden, but these radishes even more so. Her occasional gardener slipped and upended a packet of radish seeds in the process, some weeks ago. Now they’ve gone mad. And some of them found their way to me, and into this salad.

Radishes are great in a coleslaw. They can be sliced into super-slim little matchsticks, and then mixed into shredded cabbage (white or red, it doesn’t matter which).

But the little white grapes in my back yard are finally sweetening, so I picked a bunch of them and selected the plumper, sweeter ones.

Only one more element was needed: an allium. I had four slim spring onions, and they’d do the trick perfectly.

For the rest, it only needed a dressing. Mayo, yes, but not only that. I mixed mayonnaise with wholegrain mustard, a few goodly splashes of Rozendal lavender fynbos vinegar, and simple seasoning.

Tony’s radish and grape coleslaw

(Serves 4-6 as a side dish)

Ingredients

1 small white cabbage

8 to 10 red radishes, sliced thinly and cut into matchsticks

1 cup white grapes, whole or halved depending on their size

4 spring onions, chopped

Dressing:

1 cup mayonnaise

3 Tbsp Rozendal lavender botanical vinegar

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

1 Tbsp wholegrain mustard

1 tsp crushed black peppercorns

Method

Put all the dressing ingredients in a bowl and mix well.

Trim the cabbage and shred the best part of the leaves finely. Cut them crosswise as well so that you have short strips of cabbage. Add them to the bowl.

Slice the radishes and cut them into slim strips, like matchsticks.

Put them in the bowl with the cabbage, and stir all the vegetables into the dressing.

Trim and chop the spring onions and stir into the salad.

Rinse the grapes, pick the best ones, and stir them in.

Transfer to an attractive bowl, ready for serving. We used it as a side dish for a braai. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the year award, in 2021 and 2023.

Order Tony’s book, foodSTUFF, here.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed in a bowl by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.