With summer on the horizon, I find myself hankering after salads. One of my favourites is homemade coleslaw. This recipe calls for crunchy broccoli and carrots, crisp apples and a tangy homemade dressing. The perfect complement to BBQs, roast chicken or pot luck (“bring-and-braai”, if you’re South African).

The word coleslaw comes from the Dutch “koolsla”, which means cabbage (kool) salad (sla). The traditional version of this dish has cabbage as the key ingredient, but this can be substituted with other vegetables. When cabbage is left out, we just call it slaw. I like that term – it sounds kind of drawling cowboy-ish.

This broccoli slaw recipe uses the thick stalks of the broccoli plant, the pieces people usually throw away. They are great added to smoothies or juiced and work beautifully as the star of the show in a slaw.

I love it when I can find uses for the parts of vegetables that one usually discards. I usually keep my off-cuts to add as a soup base once a week, but it pleases me greatly when I find an alternative use for them.

BROCOLLI

Broccoli has wonderful health benefits and the stalks are just as nutritious as the rest of the plant. It’s full of fibre, high in water and packed with nutrients. Broccoli belongs to a group called cruciferous vegetables, of which cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts and kale are also members. Apart from the nutritional elements, the cruciferous family are also good for hormone health. One word of caution – large amounts of cruciferous vegetables, eaten raw, can impact thyroid function. Delicious as this is, a raw broccoli salad every day would not be advisable if you have thyroid issues.

APPLES

I have used a Gala apple for this recipe, to add a little sweetness to the dish. Depending on your palate, feel free to substitute this with a Granny Smith to add some tartness. The sweetness of the apples also means my kids are more likely to enjoy this salad.

An apple a day (as part of a balanced diet) can indeed keep the doctor away. Adding apples not only adds another flavour aspect, but also another healthy ingredient to broaden your intake of plain old goodness.

APPLE CIDER VINEGAR

Vinegar adds that signature tang to a coleslaw. It also works well if you’re serving your slaw with a meat like pork or beef, as it cuts through the richness of the fat.

Many coleslaw dressings call for other vinegars, but I prefer to use lemon juice or apple cider vinegar as they have added health benefits. Among other qualities, cider vinegar is beneficial to digestion, in that it helps to regulate your stomach acid.

HONEY

If you are vegan, you can either leave this out (the gala apple adds sweetness), add a handful of dried fruit or use white sugar. I prefer honey as a sweetener as it has a lower glycaemic index than sugar, so is kinder on blood sugar. Highly processed, white sugar also has no nutrients.

VEGENAISE

We consume a lot of mayo in this house. My favourite ever mayo is homemade at my sister’s lodge in South Africa. I have never been able to replicate it, much as I’ve tried. Perhaps this is a blessing as I would eat it on everything.

Although my diet is not entirely plant based I prefer Vegenaise to mayo. It has a lighter taste, not as rich, and I also feel more comfortable with the provenance of the ingredients. Traditional mayo relies on factory farmed hens to provide eggs, something that does not sit comfortably with me. Using mayonnaise will not impact the flavour of this dish, however.

EXTRAS AND SUBSTITUTIONS

This recipe is good as a side for 4. If you want to bulk it up to make it go further (and find yourself all out of broccoli stalks because you only eat so much broccoli a week) you can add:

• Finely-sliced red or white cabbage
• Shaved Brussels sprouts
• Slivers of fennel, for the more adventurous.
• Paired with celeriac this works beautifully with cabbage for a comforting winter coleslaw

You can also pimp up this salad with extras like dried cranberries, raisins, toasted seeds or sliced almonds. Just remember that if you’re adding apple, you’re better off adding seeds or nuts, as the sweetness of dried fruit on top of apple could take away from that signature slaw tang.

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