6 September 2016

Kohlrabi salad: two wonderful ways

Sandra salads kohlrabi, kohlrabi salad 2 Comments

My friend Anca has a beautiful vegetable garden. The garden itself isn’t big, but she and her husband packed it with vegetable plots, glass houses for exotic herbs and lattice work for high-growing tomato plants and bean stalks. When she was giving me a tour the other day past beautiful black cherry tomatoes, cheerfully spotted borlotti beans and beds of purple basil and ice plant, a large purple kohlrabi caught my eye. In Dutch stores, usually the smaller round and white variant is sold, so seeing this big purple thing growing above the soil was intriguing.

Anca was kind enough to let me take pictures in her garden. The kohlrabi picture features here, but photographing all the other fresh produce was so inspiring, that I think the other pictures will feature in several posts yet to come!

After photographing, the two of us headed into the kitchen. With its mild, cauliflower-like flavour and its juicy crispness, kohlrabi is particularly suitable as the raw base for a salad and we decided to each make our own version of one.

I can’t tell you how happy I am with the result! My salad resembles a classic Waldorf. It’s fresh and mild-flavoured, with a pleasantly sharp tang from the homemade raisin and ginger chutney I added. Anca’s salad has bold and punchy flavours with red onion and blue cheese and a nice and fiery warmth from the use of peppermint leaves. Reflecting our taste and cookery style, the two salads are completely different and, if I may be so bold, I think they are both amazing. And all this starting with a humble kohlrabi!

Below you’ll find the recipes for both salads. I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as we did, or that you’ll be inspired to turn the veg into a completely different dish. If you do, I’d love to hear about it!

Happy cooking!

 

Fresh kohlrabi salad with walnuts and homemade raisin chutney – serves 4-6

Ingredients

• 1 small round kohlrabi, or half a bigger purple one
• 2 fresh green apples (I used Granny Smiths)
• 1 tbsp. lemon juice (optional)
• 80 g sour cream
• large bunch of curly parsley, roughly chopped
• 100 g walnuts, roughly chopped
• 75 g rocket salad leaves
• 3 tbsp. homemade raisin and ginger chutney

 

Preparation

Peel the fibrous outer skin off the kohlrabi until you reach the tender flesh. Halve the bulb and cut both halves into julienne strips. Rinse the apples and cut them, skin-on, into cubes. If you like, mix the apple parts with the lemon juice to prevent colouring, but this isn’t essential.

Toss the kohlrabi strips with the apple parts and stir in the sour cream. Add the parsley, walnuts, salad leaves and the chutney together with the adjacent syrup. Gently mix, then enjoy.

 

Crunchy kohlrabi and fennel salad with a red onion, blue cheese and peppermint dressing

Ingredients

for the salad

• 1 small round kohlrabi, or half a bigger purple one
• 1 fennel bulb, thinly sliced, leafy fronds reserved
• 1 Little Gem lettuce, leaves torn
• 1 Romano pepper, deseeded and sliced
• 1 red onion, finely chopped
• 2 firm apples, rinsed and diced
• large bunch of flat leaf parsley, roughly torn
• 30 g blue cheese, diced

for the dressing

• 100 ml olive oil
• 1 tbsp. lemon juice
• 1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp. agave syrup
• ⅟₄ red onion (leave it out, though, if your stomach is sensitive to it)
• 20 g blue cheese
• large bunch of mint leaves, preferably half green mint, half peppermint
• freshly ground black pepper, to taste

 

Preparation

For the dressing, tip all the ingredients in a small blender and whizz until smooth.

Peel the fibrous outer skin off the kohlrabi until you reach the tender flesh. Halve the bulb and cut both halves into julienne strips.

Mix the prepared fruits, vegetables and herbs in a serving bowl and stir through 3 tablespoons of the dressing. Gently mix in the pieces of blue cheese.

Top with the reserved fennel fronds, then serve with the remaining dressing alongside.