Recipe: Choose Your Own Adventure Slaw

Kinda spawned by today's earlier post on 101 Simple Salads...

A friend was lamenting that she had a BBQ to go to and got cabbage in her CSA bag (lucky girl!). Being a good southern girl, I proclaimed that I came from a long line of slaw and cooked cabbage eating peoples. If there's one thing you learn from birth in my family, it's how to make a slaw!

Growing up "slaw" always meant a mayo-based dressing coating a cabbage & carrot salad. But with increase food safety awareness and the slowing of everyone's metabolism as they aged, the matriarchs of my family slowly moved onto the vinaigrette-based slaw. Plus I think mayo because not so culinary cool (as if my family ever really followed food trends) circa 1992. We've done so many variations on the no-mayo slaw that I have just decided to generalize the recipe and call it Choose Your Own Adventure (did you ever read those books growing up? Awesome concept.) Here it is:

The Salad:

6 cups of shredded cabbage (of your choice: regular, napa, savoy, red, etc)
1-2 cup sliced/shredded/julienned accent veg (green/red/yellow peppers, carrots, jicama, green apples, tomatoes, etc)
accent flavor*

The Dressing:

2 tbsp dijon mustard
2 tbsp acid (lime juice, red wine vinegar, cider vinegar, lemon juice, etc)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 c oil (olive, peanut, canola)
Salt & pepper

Instructions:

Mix dressing ingredients. Mix salad ingredients. Pour dressing on top of salad & toss to combine.

*Accent flavors. Pick 1-3 of the following:
- 1tbsp hot peppers, minced
-1/4 c parsley
-1/4 c cilantro
- 1 c feta cheese (or more! yum!)
- 1/4 scallion
- 1 c dried fruit (raisins, currents. apricots are nice with red cabbage)
- 1/4 c mint, basil, or...heck...any leafy herb really (I don't think something woody like rosemary would really work, but you can always give it a shot!)

Some ideas:

A "Greek" slaw would use maybe a mix of tomatoes & peppers for accent veg, feta/scallion/parsley for accent flavor, and red wine vinegar as the acid.

For "Mexican" slaw, maybe carrots & jicama for accent veg, hot peppers/cilantro for accent flavor & lime for acid

For "Sweet/Savory" slaw, maybe green apples shredded for accent veg, red cabbage, dried fruit for accent flavor and lemon or cider vinegar for acid.

CSA Monday! No Cabbage Edition

After 3 weeks (?) of getting a cabbage the size of my head, my husband was surprisingly disappointed in not getting a cabbage this week. He very much was looking forward to making Pilkliz.

Here's the haul:
1 medium broccoli, 1 massive zucchini, 7 potatoes the size of my fist, 1 cucumber, 1 fresh garlic, 1 globe (?) eggplant, and as much basil & oregano as I can eat.

Compared perhaps to last week, this week's meal plan is kinda lame but sometimes you just feel like making the obvious with the ingredients & just keeping everything simple!:

Baked Falafel Sandwiches: Frozen chickpeas (I make a large batch of dried & freeze) formed into patties will be drizzled with a cucumber taziki sauce and topped with lettuce (from grocery) and tomatoes (from garden). Maybe I'll heat up some frozen corn too. I love fafalel's with corn a la the one I had in the Hague. All stuffed into a whole wheat pita. Yum.

Baked Potatoes & Cheesy Broccoli: When I was little I would only eat broccoli if it was smothered in cheese. Times have changed (I like broccoli all sorts of ways now), but I still love it most with cheddar. Throw it on top of a baked potato & you've got a fast & fabulous dinner or weekend lunch.

Jerk Chicken with Pikliz and Grilled Eggplant & Zuc. I bought a small cabbage at the grocery store to make my husband's dream of Pikliz a reality. We'll use (blasphemously) some cayenne peppers from the garden in it instead of scotch bonnet. Since the grill will already be fired up for the chicken, might as well throw on the nightshade veg. It's my favorite way to have them anyways.

Marinara. My husband has honed his signature recipe. It involves canned tomatoes, caramelized onions, plenty of garlic and fresh basil & oregano.

If I was going to be interesting with my meals this week, I think I would have done some sort of potato-zucchini gratin and maybe some kind of indian curry with the eggplant and make a condiment out of the cucumber. But grilled veg just sounds so good.

Recipe: Tale of 2 Cabbage Casseroles

This week I got a cabbage the size of my head from my CSA. There's only one recipe I know that could possible handle such a massive amount of cabbage: Nana's Cabbage Rolls.

Cabbage rolls, specifically this recipe, were my grandfather's favorite dish. My grandma, Nana, would make it for his birthday since it was so time consuming. For me, it both reminds me of my grandfather and has a certain undeniable 1950s-retro appeal that I can't quite resist. That and it is delicious, cheap and I normally have most of the ingredients on hand. In short, the only thing not to love is the hands-on time requirement, plus the additional the 2 hours in the oven.

So, one day I had a revelation and turned my beloved grandma's recipe into a less time-consuming casserole and give it a modern kick. I'll share both of these recipes in case a mammoth head of cabbage falls into your CSA bag. Both these recipes serve 6 people.

Nana's Cabbage Rolls
1 large head of cabbage
1 lb ground beef (or turkey would work too)
1.5 c cooked rice
1 onion, diced
1 egg, slightly beaten
2 cans (10.5 oz) condensed tomato soup
1 can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes (or diced if you like chunky sauce)
4 tbsp lemon juice
4 tbsp dark brown sugar

salt & pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350*F
   
2. Prepare cabbage by slicing a 1-inch piece off the bottom of the cabbage. Put cabbage in large pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil & let boil about 10 minutes. Drain. Remove at least 12 outer leaves so that they are whole. Cut out the rib if it is heavy. Chop up the rest of the cabbage.
3. Spread a layer of chopped cabbage at the bottom of an 9x13 glass baking dish.
4. Mix together beef, rice, onion, egg, salt & pepper, & 4 tbsp of the condensed soup. This is the filling.
5. Divide the filling between your prepared cabbage leaves by placing an equal amount in the middle of each whole leaf.
6. Roll up leaves, like an envelope (tucking the sides, if possible, in). Place seam side down in the chopped cabbage covered baking dish.
7. Mix together the remaining soup, canned tomatoes, lemon juice & brown sugar. Pour over rolls.
8. Cover with foil and bake about 1.5 hours. Then, uncover and bake 30 minutes or until cooked through.

Katy's Cabbage Roll Casserole
(My version plays up the sweet-and-sour nature of the original, plus cuts down on cooking time and hands-on time. I highly recommend using hot Hungarian paprika if you have it...it gives a nick subtle kick)

1 large head of cabbage, finely chopped
1 lb ground beef (or turkey would work too)
1.5 c cooked rice
1 onion, diced

1/2 c raisins, optional
2 cans (10.5 oz) condensed tomato soup
1 can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes (or diced if you like chunky sauce)
4 tbsp lemon juice
4 tbsp dark brown sugar

oil
salt & pepper
hot Hungarian paprika, optional

1. Preheat oven to 350*F
2. Heat a little oil in a skillet. Add onions & cook until just translucent. Then add beef & cook until brown. Next, add cooked rice and stir until everything is combined & rice is coated with fat/meat juices. Season with salt, pepper & hot Hungarian paprika.
   
3. Add tomato soup, canned tomatoes, lemon juice and dark brown sugar to the meat & rice mixture. Stir to combine & turn off heat.
   
4. In a baking dish, spoon a bit of the meat sauce in the bottom. Next add a layer of chopped cabbage. Press down. Top with meat sauce.
5. Repeat the alternating of cabbage & meat sauce until your finish with cabbage on top.
6. Cover baking dish with foil and bake for 55 minutes. Then, take off foil and bake another 30 minutes until cabbage is tender. One of my favorite parts is the top layer of cabbage that gets brown around the edges. If you don't like this, end on a sauce layer.
   

Tastes better than it looks. Promise.