Our recipe for a cabbage salad with apples, cucumber, radish and creamy poppy seed dressing makes a crunchy Russian salad popularised in the diaspora in Australia thanks to an iconic Soviet-era cookbook. This salad comes in infinite variations giving you the freedom to get creative: add celery, replace apples with pears, and the creamy dressing with mustard vinaigrette.
You’ll love this recipe for a cabbage salad with apples, cucumber, radish and creamy poppy seed dressing if you’re a fan of cucumber salads, cabbage salads and coleslaws, if you’re fond of fruit in vegetable-driven salads, and you like salads with creamy dressings, such as this Russian cucumber sour cream salad.
What I love about this salad is that it’s essentially crunchy and creamy, but you can get creative with whatever you have on hand. Add even more crunch with nuts, such as walnuts or pecans. Purple cabbage is pretty but use white cabbage if that’s what’s in the fridge. Celery adds freshness. Grapes are a great addition for another texture.
This is a brilliant year-round salad and while I’m happy to munch on a bowl of this for lunch, when I’ll often add shredded poached chicken, it makes a fantastic side salad. My family served it alongside a Russian garden salad and beetroot potato salad, with chicken cutlets, such as kotleti and chicken Kiev. It’s also fantastic with barbecued meats, meatballs, roast chicken, or fried chicken.
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Cabbage Salad with Apples, Cucumber, Radish and Creamy Poppy Seed Dressing
This recipe for a cabbage salad with apples, cucumber, radish and creamy poppy seed dressing is a dish I remember appearing in various forms over the years. My Russian-Ukrainian family had a repertoire of dishes my grandmother, and great-grandmother when she was still alive, would lovingly prepare for our leisurely weekend family lunches that often evolved into dinner.
There’d always be black rye bread and a selection of zakuski, small dishes of snacks to nibble on such as dill pickles, salamis, ham and cheeses, perhaps devilled eggs, always rollmops, canned fish or mussels, smoked salmon and caviar, maybe a terrine or a bowl of ukra, and baboushka’s Russian hand pies called piroshki.
Next, there’d be several salads and maybe chicken kotlei, meat patties or meatballs, and warm casserole dishes brimming with boiled dumplings – Russian meat-filled pelmeni and Ukrainian vareniki filled with mashed potatoes or farmer’s cheese (tvorog), or maybe savoury cabbage filled dumplings.
There would be dishes that turned up occasionally, often for celebrations or holidays, such as Russian Christmas and Orthodox Easter, or for larger family gatherings – a fancy salad, say, or a slow roast. Then there’d be new dishes that we’d see infrequently, not because my grandmother didn’t enjoy adapting the menu, but because my grandfather didn’t like change.
During those pre-internet days, these new dishes came from several Soviet-era cookbooks that my grandmother treasured. One was The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food, which I have beside me right now, its fragile brown pages torn at the edges, its spine coming apart, its cover long gone.
‘The Book’ as it was referred to, is in Russian and my Russian skills are limited and mum’s vision increasingly poor. But I recently got an English translation, which has changed everything. Finally I have the source of some of the dishes that baboushka made, as well as those made by neighbours and friends, who often gave dishes to eachother.
This salad was a popular one, perhaps because it was impressive to look at, and it came in various iterations. My grandmother often tweaked it. Now I appreciate how accomplished a cook she was, embellishing recipes, combining recipes, and adding her own touches to dishes.
Baba kept notebooks of handwritten recipes, which I used to watch her sit and write at the dining table, always in her apron, in her breaks between cooking, eating, cleaning, and prepping for the next meal. Also lost long ago, sadly, I imagine those exercise books would have revealed the tweaks and transformations baba made to dishes.
My mum and dad would cook the dishes we loved from baba’s repertoire at home, and they would make their own tweaks, substituting ingredients, boosting the spice levels, and, if dad was in the kitchen, making super-size versions of baba’s dumplings and cabbage rolls.
That’s how this recipe for a cabbage salad with apples, cucumber, radish and creamy poppy seed dressing evolved over the years, starting out as a white cabbage, celery and apple salad dressed in a simple vinaigrette that was substituted with a sour cream, mayonnaise, vinegar/lemon juice, and dill dressing.
My grandfather always grew his own crunchy radishes and juicy cucumbers, so they were a natural addition. While my grandmother put white cabbage leaves in soups and used them to make cabbage rolls, she pickled purple cabbage and I bet she thought they looked prettier.
My grandmother used poppy seeds the way I use sesame seeds, liberally sprinkling them into sweet and savoury dishes, from sweet breads and cakes, to salads such as this cabbage salad with apples, cucumber, radish and creamy poppy seed dressing.
Tips to Making this Cabbage Salad with Apples, Cucumber, Radish and Creamy Poppy Seed Dressing
I only have a few tips to making this recipe for a cabbage salad with apples, cucumber, radish and creamy poppy seed dressing, starting with the dressing, which you should make first and refrigerate.
Creamy Salad Dressing
When it comes to the creamy dressing, I love a mix of sour cream, natural yoghurt, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, poppy seeds, a little garlic powder, and fresh dill.
My baboushka used mayonnaise instead of yoghurt and the original dressing called for fresh parsley. But my grandfather always grew dill, and I prefer it in Russian-Ukrainian dishes, but you use what you like.
Despite being a sesame seed lover, I adore poppy seeds in this dressing. But while sorting through old magazines at mum’s I discovered a similar salad in an old Gourmet Traveller by chef Grant Achatz (I need to look into his heritage), with Spanish onions, rocket and radicchio.
But a very different creamy dressing: the Achatz recipe for a ‘cucumber, orchard fruits and lettuces salad’ features a dressing of white sesame seeds, grape-seed oil, silken tofu, white miso, lemon juice, white peppercorns, and a small garlic clove. I will try that when I get back to Cambodia where I can more easily source silken tofu.
The Salad
I’ve added softer cos lettuce leaves to the crunchy combination of purple cabbage, sliced green and red apple pieces, cucumber slices, and radish slices. I don’t use celery, as I can’t always source it and my mum hates it, but do try it. Grapes add a pop of juiciness that I like.
I like to loosely stir through half the creamy dressing, so it doesn’t fully coat the salad, then scoop the salad onto a serving plate and use a teaspoon to dollop on some more of the creamy dressing, then sprinkle more poppy seeds and fresh dill sprigs.
Cabbage Salad with Apples, Cucumber, Radish and Creamy Poppy Seed Dressing
Equipment
Ingredients
Salad Dressing
- 100 ml sour cream
- 100 ml natural yoghurt
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp poppy seeds
- 1 tbsp fresh dill - finely chopped
Salad
- 1 small cos lettuce - leaves separated
- ¼ purple cabbage - shredded
- 1 green apple - cored and sliced
- 1 red apple - cored and sliced
- 1 cucumber - sliced
- 1 radish - sliced and slices quartered
- 1 tsp poppy seeds
- 1 tbsp fresh dill sprigs
Instructions
- Make the salad dressing: to a medium sized mason jar or other medium sized lidded jar, add the sour cream, natural yoghurt, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, garlic powder, salt, black pepper, poppy seeds, and finely chopped fresh dill, and combine vigorously with a fork or small whisk until all the ingredients are well combined, then refrigerate until ready to use.
- To a large salad bowl, add the small cos lettuce leaves, shredded purple cabbage, sliced green and red apple pieces, cucumber slices, and radish slices, and half the salad dressing, and stir to loosely combine so the crunchy vegetables and fruit pieces are lightly coated in the creamy dressing.
- Scoop the salad onto a serving plate, use a teaspoon to dollop on some more of the creamy dressing (transfer the rest to a small dish to serve on the table), and sprinkle on some black poppy seeds and fresh dill sprigs.
Nutrition
Please do let us know in the comments below if you make this recipe for a cabbage salad with apples, cucumber, radish and creamy poppy seed dressing, as we love hearing how our recipes turn out for you.
