Pretty, but kinda wonky.
As part of my buddy Tancil’s birthday evening a while back, I ended up in Cobble Hill at Mission Chinese Food. Mission Chinese used to live in the East Village, makes pretty much the best Chinese food I’ve ever had if you consider Chinese a cuisine that uses Chinese food as a launch pad into Chinese’ish awesomeness, and recently took up residence in Brooklyn after some kind of kerfuffle with rent in Manhattan. These factors apparently combined to make The Times take notice and dedicate the “Eat” section of the Sunday Magazine to the place, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before in my twelve or so years of subscribing to the Sunday Times.
So I went ahead and riffed on their recipe for Cabbage Salad with Sesame-Anchovy Dressing, which was okay except for the fact that I ended up ignoring the recipe’s measurements because I don’t know why and also substituting green-olive hummus or something like that for tahini because that’s what I had on-hand. The results were pretty but mixed.
The next night, the fridge still full of unused cabbage and other CSA veggies looking for a fate, I combined the remaining “traditional” and red cabbages, spring onion greens, peeler-shredded carrot, and red onion into a slaw and winged a new dressing with what was on hand. It ended up being super tasty. Make it yourself and give it a try. I didn’t take note of proportions because, yeah, I guess that’s not really my thing, but I trust wholeheartedly in your ability to eyeball this, taste it along the way, and get something good that you can pour on pretty much any hard, raw veggies. I need kids so I can try this stuff out on their palettes.
Recipe for What Was On Hand Slaw Dressing:
- Canola oil
- A dash of sesame oil
- chili powder
- rice wine vinegar
- soy sauce
- juice of 1/2 lime,
- crushed mustard seed
- powdered mustard (discovered post-seed)
- powdered ginger
- a ton of crushed garlic
- salt
- sesame seeds toasted in a dry, hot skillet
Shake all these guys together in a jar, pour on shredded veggies, chow.