Chinese cabbage salad

You know Chinese cabbage? Maybe you agree with me that it can be one of the most boring vegetables. I have seen it many times on the salad buffet, mostly as staff food in large hotels. When it is cut and remains outside for some time, it gets even more boring because it gets dry, not even the greatest salad dressing (and believe me, they don't put that out for staff either) can help it. Most of the time I avoid to buy it, also because you have a really large chunk of vegetable to work.
The trick is to let the dressing get inside the china cabbage and let it rest for at least 20 minutes, the leaves take up the dressing beautifully then. I decided to make a fancy dressing with different flavors: sweet, spicy and hot:

Many recipes with China cabbage are with fruit because this combines quite well.
My ingredients for the dressing:
2 shallots
1 pear
2-3 table spoons of orange mustard
(if you don't have them use normal mustard and orange peel)
a dash of white wine
a dash of water
sea salt
different oils - this time I used grape seed oil and sunflower oil.
Would be perfect with a walnut or peanut oil, too.

Fry the shallots until they have that glassy look, then put them on the salad with a little bit of the frying oil.
Mix up the other ingredients and blend them.
In the end I added roasted cashews.

And remember, it is worth a try and a great salad to bring to a barbecue, goes fine with meat, too.