Cabbage 1: slaw with Sichuan pickles

I recently decided to buy a humble cabbage to take home with the intent of finding tasty things to make of it using only what I already had on hand. I made four dishes, but the third one was a bust. For the first, I started raw. I shredded a few cabbage leaves without softening them first to keep them super crunchy. Raw cabbage is only slightly sweet with a hint of bitterness, so a good slaw requires the addition of quite a few other flavors. While most slaws depend on mayonnaise for depth of flavor, I decided to toss this cabbage with some sour Sichuan pepper pickles, a bit of sea salt, a bit of black pepper, a splash of ginger syrup to fill the mouth with flavor, and some peanut oil to help carry all those flavors.

Here are the proportions.
1 cup of shredded cabbage
1/4 cup of shredded Sichuan (or other sour) pickles
2 T peanut oil
1/2 t white ginger syrup (or 1 T minced pickled ginger)
a pinch of sea salt
a few twists of fresh black pepper

This slaw is fast, simple, crisp, fresh and delicious. Eat it just as it is, or serve it with white rice and some crispy tofu. Yum!

Beet-carrot-radish slaw

I get so much pleasure eating dishes I prepare with ingredients grown in my own garden. Usually, I just go out, pick what's ready, then think about familiar and new ways to use these ingredients, dressing them up with whatever is on hand. In July, then in October, I experimented twice with slaw. Here are the results of the July experiment, a dish I made for friends of mine whom I invited over at the last minute, a slaw made from beet greens, carrot, and pickled radish.

Beet green-carrot-radish slaw bursting with flavor

I love to prepare different parts of vegetables in different ways, and this slaw gave me a chance to do just that. The amounts in this recipe are approximate and should be adjusted according to taste, just like life!

The slaw:

3 cups of shredded beet greens,

The minced beet stems from those greens

1 medium carrot, shredded

1/4 cup of ginger-pickled french breakfast radishes (If you don't have these, just use fresh radishes and a bit of pickled ginger. The dressing may need adjusting.)

2 T chopped carrot greens

2 T chopped basil

The dressing:

2 T olive oil

1 T brine from ginger-pickled radishes (Substitute brine from pickled ginger, or perhaps rice vinegar.)

1 t ginger syrup

1 t nutritional yeast

a pinch of smoked sea salt

a twist or two of fresh black pepper

Toss all the slaw ingredients together. Blend the dressing and taste for balance, keeping in mind that the slaw has some bitter and bright notes, then toss the dressing with the slaw. Because I used pickled radishes in the slaw, there was plenty of acidity, which I balanced with the sugar, salt, and oil. Though it tastes good as is, I think letting it sit in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or so helped. The salt softens the greens a bit, and the flavors meld. If you leave it too long, though, say a few hours, it will wilt too much. It still tastes good. If that happens, use it in homemade fried rice!

I served this with cheesy polenta and turkey sausages. The flavor of the slaw is quite intense, so I wouldn't eat it by itself. Would be yummy in a Vietnamese-style curried chicken sandwich.

Gingersnaps?

In our modern, connected, planned and accounted for world, the idea that someone might come for a visit unannounced seems out of place to me to me, but as a boy, such visits were more common than not. I might have been outside playing in the yard when Uncle Frank drove up in a beige Ford shouting "Hi, peanut," even when I was almost six-feet tall. My grandparents Kern and Marion might have been on their way to camp, or on their way back. The circumstances never mattered. What did matter was that we were happy to see them, and whatever was on our table was happily shared.

Sometimes, they would bring something with them, and one of my favorite treats that my Aunt Frances brought were her gingersnaps. And, yes, I had an uncle named Francis and an aunt named Frances, husband and wife. I suppose these cookies were failures in the world of gingersnaps because, in truth, they were not hard cookies, and so they didn't snap. However, I thought then, and still think, that they are the best traditional ginger cookies. They walked the fine line between a soft cookie and a snap.

When I tried to make them as a teen, I failed, and so I decided to dust off the recipe card and try again so many years later. The result? Success. The cookies were crisp around the edges with a golden brown bottom, but chewy on the inside. 

Aunt Frances' Ginger Cookies

Aunt Frances' Gingersnaps Recipe (makes 26)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees 

Cream

   3/4 c. oleo

   1 c. sugar

Beat into the creamed mixture 

   1/4 c. molasses

   1 egg

Sift together

   2 c. flour

   1 T ground ginger

   2 t. baking soda

   1 t. cinnamon

   1/2 t. salt

Gradually beat the dry ingredients into the creamed sugar, fat, and egg.

Shape dough into 1" balls, roll in sugar, space a baker's dozen on each of two cookie sheets, and bake both sheets on the top shelf for 12-15 minutes, or place one sheet on the top shelf and the other on the middle shelf, changing positions about 8 minutes into the cooking time. Cool on baking racks.

Little Bigs

This morning, I had the pleasure of sampling a variety of treats from Little Bigs in South Portland. Among them were tasty hand pies, bismarcks, and this maple bacon cruller, the crisp, soft layers of which reminded me of a bite of thin pancake with syrup and bacon on top, but without the sticky icky. If you haven't been to Little Bigs, you don't know what you're missing. Really.

Little Bigs

340 Main Street,
South Portland, Maine, 04106

https://www.facebook.com/LittleBigs