Recipe: A Crowd-Favourite Cabbage and Pea Salad From Chris Lucas’s Neighbourhood Pizzeria

“When it comes to Italian food it’s a bit of a struggle sometimes to find beautiful, light, crunchy salads, because they don’t tend to do a lot of those,” says Chris Lucas, the restaurateur behind Melbourne restaurant Baby. “We wanted to create a dish that we thought would be popular here in Australia, but draw on some of the beautiful flavours from Italy.”

The dish has proven so popular at Baby that the team had to give it a promotion. “It started off as a side, and people were just ordering it on its own,” Lucas says. “Now we’ve made it a central dish under our salad section. We’ve had lots of people get inspired and try it at home.”

If you are having it as a side, Lucas recommends serving it with a pizza. “The acidity and the crunchiness of the salad helps with the doughiness of the pizza, so it’s an all-round dish.”

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Baby’s cabbage and pea salad

Serves 6
Preparation time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

Salad

450g savoy cabbage, thinly sliced

180g green peas

90g radish, thinly sliced

80g Parmigiano Reggiano

½ bunch mint leaves

4g chilli flakes

4g flaked sea salt

Dressing

60ml extra-virgin olive oil

25mls red-wine vinegar

10g minced garlic

15g Dijon mustard

2 sprigs thyme, picked

Salt to taste

Method

To make the dressing, combine everything except the oil in a mixing bowl. Slowly pour in the oil while mixing vigorously.

Combine the cabbage, radish, peas, mint leaves and chilli in a large serving bowl. Pour the dressing over and toss to combine. Use a Microplane to grate the parmesan on top and serve.

This is an extract from The Broadsheet Italian Cookbook, which features 80 essential recipes from Australia’s best restaurants, cafes and bars. Available at shop.broadsheet.com.au.