This is a fantastically useful salad to make because it keeps for a couple of weeks in the fridge, and it goes with all sorts of unexpected things – it’s brilliant, for example, with Fantastic Fusion mini-Japanese-Cornish Pasties. It’s excellent with the also keeps-a-couple-of-weeks As And When Pie – if you had those two in your fridge over the Christmas period you would have immediate meals on tap. This would also be a good salad for a packed lunch or a picnic. It goes well with ham, and also, rather surprisingly, with smoked salmon.

You can make your own raspberry vinegar very simply (go here to find out how), but I think the ultimate is raspberry balsamic vinegar which I use for all kinds of things (wonderful on ice cream), the one produced by Jorge Artisan Foods is excellent, it’s available in the UK from Yumbles.

Because the cabbage and onion needs to be effectively cured by the vinegar, you need to make this at least a day before you wish to eat it – but the upside is that it keeps and you can dig in when you need to.

Recipe for red salad cured with raspberry vinegar adorned with salty feta

For 10 – or a number of smaller meals

• 1 red cabbage
• 5 tbsp raspberry vinegar
• 5 tbsp olive oil
• 3 small red onions
• 10 pitted dates
• 3 tbsp dried cranberries
• Smoked salt – 1 tsp
• Indonesian long pepper, or other freshly ground black pepper
• 1 packet flat-leaved parsley
• 200g/7 oz feta
• 3 tbsp pumpkin seeds

1. Shred the red cabbage and peel and chop the red onion as small as you can. Put into a large bowl.
2. Pour over the oil, the vinegar, the salt and the pepper.
3. Chop the pitted dates roughly. Add to the other ingredients. Also add the dried cranberries. Cover with clingfilm.
4. Leave in the fridge for at least a day or two.
5. Prior to serving snip in the parsley, crumble in the feta, and serve with the pumpkin seeds sprinkled over the top.