If you eat chicken, you’ve got at least a dozen chicken salad recipes. If you eat cabbage, you’ve got at least a dozen slaw recipes. But this is a nice change, combining some of my favorite flavors. Maybe you still have a green onion hiding in the vegetable bin?
green onions
Spring Garden Hodgepodge
This recipe, adapted from “Vegetable Literacy” by Deborah Madison, is the perfect way to use so many of the bits in the box this week.
CSA Salad with Buttermilk-Green Onion Dressing
The gorgeous head of lettuce in my CSA box made me run for the salad bowl. Slice up the radishes you don’t put into a sandwich, add the cucumbers and then make this simple dressing. You could sliver some of the Napa cabbage into your salad as well. And what about boiling up a few of those eggs and adding egg halves? Now you’ve got a perfect lunch or light dinner.
Mark Bittman’s Spicy No-Mayo Coleslaw
Are you a fan of Mark Bittman? Here’s a recipe from How to Cook Everything (Completely Revised 10th Anniversary Edition) with a few variations.
Bittman says: If you want restaurant-style coleslaw, you take shredded cabbage and combine it with mayo and maybe a little lemon juice. This version is far more flavorful with far less fat. I like cabbage salad (which is what coleslaw amounts to) on the spicy side, so I use plenty of Dijon, along with a little garlic and chile (you could substitute cayenne for the chile or just omit it if you prefer), and scallions.
Hawaiian Style Sesame Cabbage Salad
This recipe was originally published in Saveur magazine.
Vegetable Lo Mein
Oops – another recipe adapted from the folks at Prevention magazine …. but this one is great for incorporating lots of lots of vegetables. You can decide how much of your bok choy or Napa cabbage to include – the whole head? half? a quarter?
Easy Lemon Basmati Rice with Green Onions and Parsley
Hmmm …. guess I’m on a green onion binge. Well, here’s one more idea.
I’m spending a lot of time at my main job looking at magazines that focus on health. I’ve really come to appreciate little Prevention magazine and you’re also going to be seeing a lot of their recipes this year. This one comes from their book “Quick and Healthy Low-Fat Cooking.”
Pickled Spring Onions
First, a warning. You’re going to get lots of pickle recipes this year. Not sure why, but I’m on a pickling binge. And you can pickle anything. Really. These are going to be refrigerator pickles – really just seasoned vegetables that you can keep refrigerated for up to a month or so. Lots of health benefits from pickles and fermented vegetables, so I hope you’ll enjoy them.
Justin Burdett of Miller Union demonstrated this recipe at the Peachtree Road Farmers Market just about a year ago. Put up some of those pretty green onions you got today. Won’t be long before they’ll just be a fond memory.
Justin called for champagne vinegar, which sounds a bit more decadent that it really is. It’s pretty reasonably priced, but you could substitute white wine vinegar or even apple cider vinegar and still get good results. He also cools the brine before pouring it over the vegetables – that keeps the green onions from turning olive green right away and preserves the fresh flavor a little more. Since the green onions are tender, they don’t need even the little bit of cooking that happens when you pour boiling liquid over your vegetables. And it also means these are absolutely, positively refrigerator pickles. No sitting around at room temperature for these savory bits.