Raw vegetable slaw with creamy garlic dressing

Hi!  I haven´t been blogging much lately and it certainly has not been through the lack of interest or because I haven´t been cooking. I am finishing up my school year and  it has been exceptionally tiring. Still, I am not compaining. My holidays begin on Tuesday at  4:00. I truly cannot believe it. There are many who think that teachers don´t deserve the holidays they have but I just ignore them.  So, if any of you hear a peculiar celebratory yelp around that time on Tuesday, you will know that it is me, galloping out of work hahah!! And yes, I mean galloping.

As I said, I have been cooking and one of the things I made recently is the recipe chosen from my cooking group Cookthebookfridays .  I should mention that I am enjoying being in the group so much and the cookbook is really a gem. I am learning a lot. I was interested in this recipe because you can use any combination of the following: cabbage (red or green), endives, carrots, beets, apples, broccoli or cauliflower, radishes, fennel, avocados or hard boiled eggs. Seeing the lovely variety, I decided to double the original amounts and make it into a lunch. So instead of 6 cups of ingredients, I made 12.  I ended up using red cabbage, carrots, beets, radishes, apples, broccoli and avocado. Don´t be turned off by the apples guys. they actually work in a salad.

The dressing for the recipe was inspired by something called aïoli which I am quite familiar with because it is often used in Spain. It is a garlic mayonnaise which is not hard to make and it is often used to dip in bread, chips (french fries), croquettes and so forth. It is delicious and I will tell you right now that it is ten times better homemade. If you are interested in making it, check out the recipe here.

My husband and I liked the recipe very much. I think I prefer things just a bit less creamy, especially in a salad but I would still make this again, perhaps with some leftover rotisserie chicken as is suggested in the recipe.  A variation on this recipe is to use a garlic vinaigrette instead of a creamy dressing. I decided to make this variation today as my starter for lunch. I did not have the same variety of vegetables but it didn´t matter. I cannot share David Lebovitz´s recipe for garlic vinaigrette but here is a recipe that looks good. I did not use the lemon juice as it suggests and I used a sherry vinegar which was lovely.

So, which dressing is better? In my opinion, the aïoli. the vinaigrette is good but doesn´t impress me the same way that the other did.

I am looking forward to reading the reactions of others to this recipe. If you are interested too, check out the Cookthebookfridays .

Enjoy! xxx Natascha