Vegetable dress by Sara Illenberger.
Recipe: Savoy Cabbage Slaw with Golden Raisins, Pine Nuts, and Thai Basil
Beautiful dress, no? I’d love to wear that. I’ll bet it’s comfortable, too, and the string bean waistline makes it look potentially quite slimming. This beautiful piece of couture got me thinking about a dish I do a variation on each summer when I start seeing cabbages at the market. It’s a kind of Sicilian-inspired coleslaw. Each year I choose different add-ins. This one includes pine nuts, golden raisins, a touch of anchovy, some fresh red chili, Thai basil (you can, of course, use regular basil, but Thai gives it that important hint of exotica you’ll need if you’ll be eating it while wearing this gorgeous dress), all held together by silky extra-virgin olive oil. It’s the best side to serve with a sausage and pepper barbecue.
Savoy Cabbage Slaw with Golden Raisins, Pine Nuts, and Thai Basil
(Serves 4 as a side dish)
1 small savoy cabbage, trimmed, cored, and very thinly sliced
1 small red onion, very thinly sliced
A large palmful of pine nuts, lightly toasted
A large palmful of golden raisins, tossed in a tablespoon of dry white wine
2 oil-packed anchovies, minced
1 small fresh red peperoncino chili, seeded and minced
2 teaspoons Spanish sherry vinegar
½ teaspoon sugar
Salt
A few big gratings of nutmeg
⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil
A handful of Thai basil leaves, very lightly chopped
In a pretty serving bowl, combine the cabbage, onion, pine nuts, raisins (with their soaking wine), anchovies, and peperoncino.
In a small bowl, whisk together the vinegar, the sugar, a little salt, the nutmeg, and the olive oil. Pour this over the cabbage, and toss well. Add the Thai basil, and toss gently. Serve at room temperature.
Erica De Mane 
I love the combination of ingredients here, with anchovies.
Thanks Simona. Sometimes I think I overdo it with the anchovies, but when you use just a few, there’s really no anchovy taste, just a nice underpining, creating a flavor base. Most people can’t even detect their presence.
If you wore that dress in my neighborhood her in the Conejo Valley, Ventura County, CA, you wold be eaten alive by the thousands of free-roaming bunnies that populate this region. ( Conejo= rabbit en Espanol ) But never mind the bunny rabbits, I think it’s the sexiest vegetarian coutre I’ve ever seen. Do you wear it and roll around in dressing or just hose yourself down with dressing? Either way…I don’t know where you found it…but it’s a true work of art as is this latest recipe. Tell me something: do you ever run out of ideas or are you just a ceaseless font of food artistry? Do you ever seriously think about having your own restaurant? I know it’s a ruthless business but I think you’d pack ’em in…especially if you were the hostess in that dress. I don’t suppose you’d get more than one wearing out of it, tho’. BTW, I’m an anchovy-aholic myself so you could NEVER use too many for me. Beautiful stuff; keep it up!
Thanks so much Michael. Anchovies rule. And to answer your questions, it’s true that I almost never run out of food ideas. Sometimes I think it’s because only one little area in my brain is actually functioning. So be it. And no, I could never run a restaurant. I need to be alone too much.