
This recipe’s parents are two recipes from Salt Fat Acid Heat: orange and olive salad, and Mexican-ish salsa verde. It’s not an exact combination of the two, but I drew inspiration from them to create this very flavorful, crisp, refreshing salad.
Start by sectioning the citrus. I find this process to be a giant pain in the ass, but it is necessary so that you don’t have any membranes in your salad. For citrus, you can really use any combination: blood oranges, grapefruit, sumo citrus, regular oranges…whatever you have in the fridge that day. Combine your citrus with halved Kalamata olives (I suspect green olives would work too, but I haven’t given this a try). I probably used 3-4 oranges/grapefruits and a half cup of the olives. Adjust to your liking, though. Add in julienned cabbage–roughly 1/2 head–and one julienned carrot. You could shred the carrot, too, if you prefer.
For the dressing, mince 3 tbsp shallots and one jalapeno pepper (seeded) and let macerate for about 15 minutes in a bowl with the juice of two limes. In a separate bowl, combine 1/4 c chopped cilantro, 1/4 c neutral oil (like grapeseed), salt to taste. Spoon out the shallots and jalapeno into the oil/cilantro combination, and taste for acid. If it needs more acid, add the lime juice little by little until it tastes right to you.
Combine the dressing with the orange/olive/cabbage mixture. Let sit for 5 minutes or so, then eat! This salad goes really nicely with fried chicken, conveyor belt chicken, citrus braised chicken, or slow-roasted citrus salmon.