Tags
asian slaw, cat, cole slaw, coleslaw, cooking, easy, Fourth of July, fun, Hairless cat, party food, seventeen, shpinx, sriracha
I would like to start out apologizing for not blogging last week. My plan was to blog once a week; unfortunately, we have been having some internet connection problems and I had another blog all written up for last week and I lost it all to the evil, slow Wi-Fi. I have decided to rally, and write my blog in Word before posting it to the Internet for safety reasons. Now I am camping out at my local coffee shop to do all my activities that require Internet. (LOL)
I have made this recipe countless times, and since yesterday was the Fourth of July it feels like it needs to make a comeback. There is nothing that screams summer more than really good coleslaw, or the Fourth of July.
I got this recipe from The Sriracha Cookbook, which I got for my dad a few years ago and has slowly become my go-to for all of my Sriracha needs. The recipe is a spicy Asian style slaw; I have made it a few times for parties and it has always been a huge hit! The biggest draw for a lot of my friends is that it has no mayo. Personally, I have never had an issue with mayo, but a large number of my friends seem to detest it.
Ingredients:
Dressing:
1/3 c chunky natural peanut butter
¼ c freshly squeezed lime juice
¼ c freshly squeezed orange juice (pineapple juice will work here too)
¼ c Sriracha
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbs fish sauce
1 tbs ginger paste
1 tbs sugar
Slaw:
1½ lbs Napa cabbage, shredded
½ lb red cabbage, shredded
2 carrots, peeled and grated
1 jalapeño, seeded and minced
6 green onions, white part only, thinly sliced on the diagonal
¼ c chopped fresh cilantro
¼ c chopped fresh mint
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Coarsely chopped fresh Thai basil, for garnish
Lime slices, for garnish
Warning: I will be making a double batch so my food in the pictures might look a little different than yours.
Part 1: Making the Dressing
The first thing I always do when making this recipe is to make the dressing. My reasoning is that the dressing will save, so I can make it a day or two in advance. Also letting the dressing sit in the fridge for a little while before use always helps the flavors mix better and overall creates a way better final product.
Here is the dressing before it is mixed.
So all you are going to do to make the dressing is basically just whisk the peanut butter, lime juice, orange juice, Sriracha, garlic, fish sauce, ginger paste and sugar together in a medium sized bowl. I, as usual, recommend using a bowl with a cover.
I totally spaced and forgot to get a pic of the final dressing product, so here is a picture of my favorite whisk instead. (LOL)
Part 2: Prepping the Veggies
I had to work on the fourth of July so I asked my dad and Mowgli to fill in and help cut the veggies up 🙂
The next thing you have to do is to prepare the veggies. There are a few ways to do this and I have tried two of them. The first way is you can use a knife and a cheese grater and cut/shred everything by hand. The second way is you can use a food processor. We have a few hundred attachments for our food processor so that option seems easy for me. What I would recommend, however, is the first way. I tried the second way thinking it would be super easy. It ended up making a huge mess and it cut the cabbage and other veggies way to thin for my liking. I like the cabbage to be a little thicker so it can hold the dressing. When the veggies get to thin, the coleslaw gets too soggy and you end up with lunchroom variety slop.
So cutting the veggies. First I always start with the cabbage, because it is kind of a chore and you begin looking forward to cutting just two dainty carrots (LOL).
To begin with the red cabbage, first rinse the cabbage as always and take off any outer layers that don’t look great. Then cut it into quarters. This will make it easier to slice thin. Be sure to remove the little hard stem part after you quarter the cabbage.
After the cabbage is prepped for the prepping, take a SHARP knife, and, laying the cabbage quarter on its side, begin slicing the cabbage as thin as you can. It will begin to fall apart perhaps, but don’t worry, use your best judgement and after you have completed slicing the quarter take a couple minutes to root out any giant pieces and cut them a little thinner. Repeat this step with the rest of the cabbage, placing your finished product in a large bowl.
In a similar manner, thinly slice the Napa cabbage as well, putting it in the large bowl with the red cabbage.
Next, seed the red bell pepper. I do this by cutting the pepper in half and ripping the seeds out with my hands. I have seen many other methods so just do whatever works best for you. Then, slice the pepper as thin as you can. Again, slicing things thin is way easier with a sharp knife but be careful to not let the knife slip because if a sharp knife slips it will find a way to cut you. A dull knife on the other had will slip all the time because it will have trouble cutting into the vegetable and can be equally or even more dangerous than a sharp knife. A dull knife will also not deliver the desired effect.
After you have placed the thinly sliced bell pepper in the bowl with the cabbage, use a large toothed cheese grater to grate the carrots. The original recipe calls for the carrots to be julienned; however, I am not a master chef and I cannot julienne anything, so I grate them. I do grate them diagonally along the length of the carrot though, so I can get longer strands of carrots. This method has worked quite well for me; however, if you are a master chef please teach me your julienning ways!!! Since my dad took over the vegetable cutting and he is a master veggie cutter; he julienned the carrots. Don’t worry if you can’t though. I’m in the same boat. (LOL)
Now remove the seeds from the Jalapeño and mince it (chop very fine). Put it in the large bowl. Finally, slice the white part only of the 6 green onions; slice them very thin and on a diagonal so the pieces are a bit longer.
Now chop the fresh cilantro and mint and throw them in with the other veggies as well.
I used a giant metal bowl to make tossing the ingredients together way easier!
Part 3: Mixing the Slaw
Now comes the easy part! Pour the dressing over the veggie mixture and toss it all together. I don’t usually use all the dressing because if you want more you can add it, but it is harder to take it off again.
I just poured the dressing on, and tossed it all together! Mission complete!
Now, season with salt and pepper to taste and garnish with Thai basil and lime slices and enjoy!
My one suggestion is that if you are making this for the Fourth, or any late night party, you can make the dressing in the morning and cut the veggies and toss it closer about an hour or so before serving. You can even just toss it right before you serve it, just don’t do it more than an hour ahead or it’s just not going to be as crispy as you want it to be.
I had a few friends come over right as I finished the slaw and they proceded to steal it from me and pretend they brought it to the party themselves. (LOL) My mom was very impressed!
That’s what I did. I made the dressing and then took a nice nap with Mowgli. My mom has made me take a nap every year on the Fourth of July because she is worried I won’t make it until fireworks. I mean to be honest, she used to force me to take a nap. Now I do it all by myself because being awake is hard!
Mowgli and I were exhausted after our hard work… and my mom snuck in and took a picture of us… MOOOOM!!!!
I hope you enjoyed my blog. Look for more to come!!
<3,
Zoey and Mowgli
P.S. from Mom: Funnily enough, getting Zoey to nap when she was younger was not so easy, and she tended to nap at all the wrong times, like, say, in the middle of eating dinner. In general, nowadays, she’s totally mastered the day nap and my task is to try to wake her up, usually to clean her room or get the table ready for dinner. Just wanted to clear that up.
Urban Teen Cuisine 