Cole Slaw

It's been a very long time since I made cole slaw. This is most likely because it is something that I made or handled every day at the restaurant. We always served a big pile of tangy slaw with our exceedingly rich crab cakes, as a foil to the fat and as a palate cleanser. More importantly, making slaw daily let us use whatever vegetables our farmers were bringing to us, no matter the season. It always seemed important to give our loyal farmers a market for their fruits and vegetables.

Cole Slaw

My wife was scared of my slaw long ago when we met because she had known slaws only with gloppy mayonnaise-based dressings. I'm not a fan of this creamy slaw myself, so I always dress my slaw quite simply with rice vinegar and granulated sugar, with a bit of salt to taste. I can't give you a recipe for the dressing for I literally scatter a handful of sugar and a bit of salt on the vegetables and pour over a bit of vinegar. I mix it well and taste. If it needs more acidic bite, in goes more vinegar. If it is too acidic, a bit more sugar will balance it.

It's best to make your slaw early in the day to give the dressing time to wilt the vegetables a bit before dinner. Though it is delicious right away, it gets better with age, to a point. It helps to turn a new batch of slaw every couple of hours to redistribute the dressing. Although you can slice your vegetables with a food processor, I always use a knife. It takes work, but the texture is better and you can work on your knife skills at the same time.

While cole slaw derives from words meaning cabbage salad and while cabbage is the principal component, you should not hesitate to be creative with your slaws. Any fruit or vegetable that is firm enough to slice and that is edible raw is fair game. I made this one from white cabbage, cucumber, carrot, radishes, and an apple.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the things that I remember having put in slaw, each one I made being a function of the season and what was on hand.

Cabbage: white, red, napa, Savoy, brussels sprouts

Firm Leafy Greens: cavolo nero (Tuscan black kale), kale, collards, gai lan (Chinese broccoli), bok choy, choy sum, endive, chicory, Swiss chard

Other Brassicas: broccoli, cauliflower, broccolini, stem broccoli, rapini, stem mustard. Broccoli and cauliflower stems are great in slaw, peeled and thinly sliced.

Root Vegetables: turnips, rutabagas, kohlrabi, carrots, horseradish, radishes (red, breakfast, daikon, Korean), hard winter radishes (watermelon, black, etc), sunchokes, crosnes, beets, celery root, sweet potatoes, parsnips

Other: asparagus, cucumber, cucamelon, fennel, celery, green beans, pole beans, shaved corn, peas, sugar snaps, snow peas, rhubarb, artichoke hearts and stems

Herbs: lovage, parsley, cilantro, chives

Squashes: summer squash, winter squash (butternut slices really well)

Peppers: I don't like the flavor of raw peppers in my slaw, but many people do. They are all fair game, spicy and mild alike.

Onions: yellow, white, red, torpedo, green, cipollini, leeks, green garlic, chives. Onions can dominate, so I only use little bits for complexity, typically red and/or leeks.

Hard Fruits: apples, pears, Asian pears

How off the wall can you get? I once did a slaw including napa cabbage, beets, fennel, and orange segments that I served with fennel pollen-dusted grilled trout. I tend, when using beets, to keep them sliced separately from the rest of the slaw and mix them in just at service, to keep them from turning the slaw entirely beet red, unless I am aiming for a red slaw for presentation purposes.

The things that I avoid for slaw form a much shorter list: tender greens (salad greens, mustards, spinach, etc.) that will not stand up to the dressing, really starchy things that are not great raw (potatoes, eggplant), watery fruits (tomatoes, berries, melons), peppers (out of personal preference, though a bit of habanero in a slaw can be awesome), okra, mushrooms, and shell beans.