Winter rainbow salad

What a healthy salad this is. Cabbage is a better source of vitamin C, we all know that; plus the raw onions which used to be eaten to prevent rickets in the times when people knew what rickets was. There is healthy dressing instead of mayo, the usual cabbage salad lubricant; and there’s parsley which cures mouth ulcers better than Bonjela. It's winter rainbow health, that's what it is.

The rainbow factor makes it taste better – the violet of the cabbage, red of onion and orange of carrots plus the greens of the other cabbage and herbs make such a pleasing hue that this might even be successful with kids, who otherwise normally run screaming when raw cabbage and onions are mentioned. We hope they’ll eat with their eyes – though there are smart kids who will tuck in enthusiastically and then even more keenly push the plate away. Taste buds don’t lie.

But joking and health aside, this is a supremely tasty salad. Feel free to improvise, with yellow peppers and radishes for instance – both good colours in the rainbow. And if you manage to find the something blue or indigo, you’ll have the full Richard Of York. I wasn’t being a strict colour disciplinarian building this salad – but then I’m not overly bothered with form over substance: this salad tastes good.

Obviously, it’s not an exclusively ‘winter’ salad. It can easily be made in any season and in fact should be encouraged to be made often as it’s so healthy. But truth be told, ‘all year round rainbow salad’ does sound quite clunky so winter it shall be.