Smitten Kitchen has declared the opening of slaw season, sharing a summer slaw recipe built on a 2:4:1 ratio of cabbage to vegetables to crunchy elements and a miso-sesame dressing that the blogger says already existed on the site's Miso Sweet Potato Broccoli Bowl and in The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. The dressing combines tahini, white miso, honey, rice vinegar, toasted sesame oil, and olive or neutral oil, with ginger, garlic, salt, and Sriracha to taste. The salad calls for 4 cups of thinly sliced mixed vegetables, 2 cups of thinly sliced cabbage, 1 cup chopped salted peanuts, 1 cup sliced scallion, and optional cilantro, with grilled chicken thighs as an optional protein. Total time is 25 minutes, mostly chopping, and it serves four.
The blogger writes that the salad is designed for portability, holding up for hours and even days if the dressing is kept separate, and suggests bringing it to a pool or avoiding concession stand lines. The dressing and chopped vegetables, except cilantro, keep for up to five days in the fridge when stored separately.
In a note marked with an asterisk, the blogger describes dropping her 6-year-old off at elementary school and feeling a knot of doom and dread at the possibility that the child would not return, while her son was away on a school trip. She writes that the problem in America is unique in its frequency and in the inability to address it, and that there have been more mass shootings than days in the year so far. She points to what she calls sound solutions in The New York Times and lists Everytown for Gun Safety and Sandy Hook Promise as places to donate, with more listed in an article she links.
A second note acknowledges pushback against calling such salads Asian chicken salad, linking to an unlocked New York Times article and writing that the presence of miso or ginger does not make something representative of a 48-country continent.
Editorial Notes