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Apple, Red Cabbage and Watercress Salad

I want to eat smaller, mayonnaise-bound salads instead of large bowls of rocket and mizuna dressed with olive oil and smothered in cheese. I like those spiky salad leaves but, after 10 years of enthusiasm, it is nice to turn instead to neat forkfuls of vegetables, herbs, nuts, fruits, perhaps cured meat or leftover chicken, clinging together with the help of an oil—egg emulsion like mayonnaise. Even a small amount fills and fuels you through an afternoon. These salads keep for 2 or 3 days in the fridge, so are a useful everyday graze. Leaves need not be left out. In the following recipe, they are part of the dressing.

This apple-based salad is lovely eaten alone but good, too, with hot boiled gammon, cold ham or cured sausage.

Serves 4

6 apples (the red skins of Worcesters are effective with the cabbage)

a squeeze of lemon juice

¼ red cabbage

2 tablespoons walnut halves

a little oil

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the dressing:

2 egg yolks

1 heaped teaspoon Dijon mustard

2 bunches of watercress, chopped

300ml/½ pint light olive oil, sunflower oil or groundnut oil

1–2 tablespoons white wine vinegar, to taste

1 tablespoon cornichons (baby gherkins), drained and finely chopped

First make the dressing: put the egg yolks and mustard into a bowl and mix well with a small whisk. Add the chopped watercress, then beat in the oil, a few drops at a time to begin with, then adding it a little faster once a third of it has been incorporated. If you add the oil too quickly it may curdle. Mix in the vinegar with the cornichons and set to one side.

Quarter the apples, remove the cores and slice them thinly, leaving the skins on. Dress with a little lemon juice to stop discoloration. Shred the cabbage as finely as possible, keeping the crunchy stalk. Put both the apple and cabbage into a bowl, then pour over enough of the dressing to give a good covering (set the rest aside; it will store well in a jar in the fridge).

Mix the salad gently so the apple slices do not break. Taste a little and add salt if necessary. Season with black pepper.

Toast the walnut halves in a pan with a little oil over a medium heat, then grind them in a pestle and mortar or chop them to a rough consistency. Scatter the nuts over the plates of salad as you serve it, spooning the salad on to the plates in appetisingly high mounds.