Combine the sweet and salty whole baked apple stuffed with bacon and shallots with the peppery notes of arugula leaves and red cabbage. Transform an otherwise simple salad with a bit of imagination and fun!
On medium heat, add 1 tbsp of olive oil to a small fry pan. Fry bacon and shallots for 5 minutes or until medium brown. Set aside.
Using an apple corer, remove the core. Set mandoline at 3 cm thickness and slice the apple. After slicing each apple, put the slices back to resemble a whole apple.
Baste ½ tbsp of olive oil in a ceramic baking dish. Stuff each apple with bacon and shallots and bake at 180°C or 350°F for 30 minutes.
Wash and dry arugula.
In a small fry pan, dry toast pine nuts until golden brown.
De-seed pomegranate.
Slice red cabbage thinly.
Salad Dressing
In a small mixing bowl, add the olive oil, apple cider vinegar, honey, Dijon mustard and the juice of ¼ lemon.
Mix until well combined.
Assembly
In a medium size mixing bowl, add arugula, red cabbage. ½ pine nuts and ½ the pomegranate seeds.
Add 1 tbsp of olive oil and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Mix until well combined.
Place the salad onto a large platter.
Put the whole baked apples on top.
Sprinkle the rest of the pine nuts and pomegranate on top.
Drizzle the dressing on top of the apples.
Season with cracked pepper to taste.
Serve.
Notes
For a vegan salad, omit the bacon or use vegan bacon. You can use the seitan version of even the tofu version marinated in soy to give the much needed saltiness. Replace honey with maple syrup or organic rice malt syrup.
You can certainly use green cabbage for this recipe if you’re unable to find red cabbage.
You can substitute cabbage with kohlrabi or Brussels sprouts.
If you don’t like arugula, you can try watercress or purslane. You do need some peppery notes to complement the sweetness from the apple and saltiness from the bacon.
Dried pomegranate or cranberries would work well if pomegranates are not in season.