DARE TO GO BEYOND CABBAGE
Fresh summer veggies perk up a slaw ... just hold off dressing it until you’re ready to serve
When it comes to picnic and potluck contributions, almost everyone welcomes coleslaw. But there are more interesting vegetables of summer than cabbage.
In one recipe, radishes, pert and peppery, join forces with sweet snap peas and carrots. In the other, a cabbage cousin, kohlrabi, snuggles up to crisp fennel. Herbs complement the mix.
These are two sturdy slaws that stay crunchy, even when tossed with a dressing.
There will be a lot of chopping, which means it’s worth extracting an appliance or specialty tool from the back of some lower cabinet.
My grandmother made slaw with the chopping attachment for her stand mixer, and, while I have one of those, I prefer to use a manual mandoline (unless I’m dealing with several heads of cabbage at once).
The slivered matchsticks are so pretty, and their squared structure means more of the dressing clings to each piece. This is slow and deliberate work, even meditative. To allay mandoline-phobia, you could invest in safety, cut-proof, mesh gloves.
When I simply need to get a slaw made, the grating disk on my food processor provides the muscle power. Put all the vegetables through the feed tube and they emerge similarly shaped, a riot of colour.
Cut the vegetables into equalsize chunks before processing to avoid long strands that dangle precariously from the fork.
Similar shapes and sizes means every bite contains a bit of this and a bit of that, and it’s easier to eat while juggling plate, glass and napkin.
In a pinch, a box grater gets the job done; safety gloves are useful for close work. The rule of (injury-free) thumb for chopping slaw vegetables is consistency: Keep the pieces a similar size.
How to dress it is a matter of personal choice. There are mayonnaise-based dressings, of course. But I opt for a sweet-and-tangy poppyseed dressing on one slaw and a citrus-and-chile dressing on the other.
It should not be dressed too far in advance. The salt and vinegar will pickle the slaw mixture, wilting it slightly and extracting moisture from the vegetables. Too much time in a salty brine and that slaw is a kissing cousin to sauerkraut — without the benefit of a slow, controlled fermentation.
To avoid a pickled situation, I travel to the party with the undressed slaw in the serving bowl and the dressing in a tightly capped jar. As soon as I arrive, I’ll toss everything together for the freshest, crunchiest slaw.