Sunday, June 30, 2013

Chinese cabbage slaw with carrots and daikon.

Napa cabbage slaw with ginger garlic dressing. © Ryan Schierling
I didn't eat life-changing barbecue until we moved to Austin. That was four years ago, and that means I put a lot of passable, fair-to-middlin', sometimes downright horrible smoked meat in my craw prior to immigrating to the Great Republic of Texas. In those lean years of blasé barbecue, sides were sometimes a salvation and after so many years of side-dish subsistence, I came to love them more than the main event – the meat. 

Don't hate me, but in those years I really learned to appreciate the subtleties in a coleslaw or potato salad, and I started exploring... experimenting a bit. Napa cabbage is Chinese cabbage. It's not from Napa Valley. Who thought that one up? It's typically used in China, Japan and Korea, so that's how the flavors of this slaw came to be. It's a little tangy, a little sweet, with some nice ginger and garlic background and the toasted sesame oil rounds everything out with a big, rich hug. The carrots give a little bit of natural sweetness, and the daikon radish provides a very mild heat and more crunch.

If you've never worked with Napa cabbage, the outer leaves of the football-sized beast are a little thick, and a bit astringent, but if you peel enough back you'll get to the pale yellow-green, delicate insides. I use one or two of the outer leaves for their bright green color, and I don't mind the added bit of sharpness. The overall flavor is less pronounced than normal cabbage, and it's not nearly as heavy. It makes a very nice, light summer salad with grilled meat like bulgogi or flanken-style short ribs. 

Saturday, June 29, 2013

The doctor's new way of making coleslaw.


Garlic salad. © Ryan Schierling
We punish ourselves once a year or so, pushing out five posts in five days, all related to this or that. Last year it was cucumber salads. The year prior, potato salads and a good five days of grilling. 

This summer, we're all about the slaw, so we're going to give you five before the 4th of July. 

There is a gold standard for All-American picnic coleslaw, and it is Kentucky Fried Chicken. As much as I hate to say it, and as much as you might disagree, it is the truth. Name a chain restaurant that has more than 18,000 units and sells as much coleslaw as the Colonel. KFC itself calls it "The World's Best Coleslaw," says that it's "freshly prepared in store" and "sets the coleslaw standard by which all other coleslaws should be measured." My friend Gary worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken in the late 80s, and he tells me that while they made scratch biscuits back then, the chickens were disassembled and breaded on-site and the gravy was homemade – the only thing that was NOT freshly-prepared in store was the coleslaw. It came in bags. It still does, from what I hear. 

Big bags of chopped cabbage, carrots, and onions. The sauce – according to the corporate website – is a mix of sugar, soybean oil, vinegar, salt, eggs, corn starch, mustard flour, xanthan gum, the ever-popular natural and artificial flavor, paprika extractives, paprika, and caramel color. Sugar is the first ingredient, and the last time I sampled it (for research reasons, of course) it was so sweet it could have been some weird cabbage dessert.

I do appreciate it for the role it plays in KFC's menu, which is as a foil to the crunchy, salty chicken. I do have a soft spot for all coleslaw varietals, and I like that the KFC extremely-fine chop of the cabbage, carrot and onion isn't something you get with most coleslaws. If you've ever seen the term "mechanically-separated" on a chicken, pork or beef product, you can only imagine what a Robot Coupe the size of a grain silo with a few million cutting blades would do to truckloads of cabbages, carrots and onions. I'm speculating here, but only in a way that imagines there are no human hands actually involved in the preparation of this product. It's made by coleslaw robots.

I need a coleslaw robot…

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Pattypan Parmesan

(L) Pattypan squash. (R) Pattypan Parmesan. © Ryan Schierling
Pretty and petite, pattypan squash is a rare gem to find in the grocery store – which is a tragic testament to the SKU-driven times we live in. Not only are they adorable, with their flying-saucer shape and scalloped edges, they are mild and delicious to eat.

As a kid, we had these pale green lovelies in our big garden every year along with the yellow crookneck and zucchini. While squash wasn't my favorite vegetable, the pattypan was my first choice whenever squash was served plain. They can be enjoyed small (bite-sized is what you might find in stores) or as big as six inches in diameter, depending upon how you plan to prepare them. Pattypan squash also comes in varieties ranging from yellow and dark green to white, but it's the pale green ones that bring back the memories of searching for them, so-well camouflaged under the big green leaves.


It was a visit to an Austin farmer's market to that reignited my passion for pattypans. A few years ago in bee-line route to get a dozen fresh "yard eggs" before they were sold out, I passed a vendor with a bounty of pattypan and had to stop. This is why everyone should go to the farmer's market on occasion – such delightful finds! 

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

I'm going to Wichita / Far from this opera forever more.

Chicken-fried steak and eggs at Jimmy's Egg. © Ryan Schierling
We do not eat poorly. Truly. 

But when we're on the road, any and all respectable regimens of normal dietary discipline go out the window at 75-miles per hour, sometimes even before we leave Austin proper. I'd like to think that I can blame it on genetics – mom always packed boxes of Cheez-Its for vacations, and dad had to make pit-stops for Dr Pepper and peanuts – but the truth is, the road is kind of like the bottle. "It don't make you do a thing, it just lets you."*

Wichita, Kansas is 543 miles from Austin, Texas. There are a number of other, perhaps more desirable destinations within that 543-mile radius. Tampico, Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. New Orleans, Louisiana. Mobile, Alabama. Jackson, Mississippi. Las Cruces, New Mexico. Certainly these are all more favorable locales than the largest city in Kansas? Perhaps. Depends on your history, and what your motivations are. We are headed to Wichita.

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