Radish Slawghter

We joined a CSA this year. It was a practical choice, for the most part - our vegetable intake was a bit on the low side and our preferred supermarket, while being awesome-cheap for most things and having generics that blow their name brand competitors out of the water in price and, shockingly, taste, is a bit hit-or-miss when it comes to produce.

This hasn't been a good summer for Massachusetts agriculture so far. Too much rain and not enough sun means all sorts of normal summer crops are behind schedule (no local corn yet and no tomatoes) while green leafy things are doing just fine. With our first CSA box last week, we got some lettuces and peas and other tasty things, along with a gigantic mess of radishes, and how many radishes can two people realistically eat? CSAs are the Right Thing To Do, I think, but they're also expensive - you get what you pay for but you get a lot of it, and every last bit thrown away because you can't find a use for it or forgot about it in the crisper (sorry, arugula; sorry Farmer Dave) hurts a little.

The other thing about CSAs is, we went into it thinking we were going to save money off of our weekly grocery trips because we wouldn't have to buy as many vegetables. That might be a little true, but realistically we just end up eating more vegetables - we're eating healthier, not cheaper.

Anyway. What do you do when you have radishes coming out of your ears?
Make slaw out of them.

This recipe might not be to everybody's taste - I'm pretty easy-going, food-wise, but I'm overly picky about slaw, about water content and texture and cut and...I get excitable in diners, is what I'm saying. Also, there's no cabbage in this slaw, mostly because I didn't get any from the CSA this week, but there ARE garlic scapes in it because I did get those. Throw a little bit of garlic in it if you'd like and if you don't want to go scape-hunting, but don't overdo it.


Ingredients:

(I did this by eye - you know what slaw's supposed to look like, right? Keep adding stuff until it's the right combination of colors. I've listed the ingredients relationally with a basic idea, but your gut's probably a better guide. The recipe itself is a modification of this one from myrecipes.com.)

Salad:
1 cup Radishes, rough cut in slivers
1/3 cup bell pepper, chopped
1/2 as much of the bell pepper as Carrot, rough cut in slivers
1/2 as much of the bell pepper as Garlic Scapes

Dressing:
2 tbsp vinegar, any will do, I used Apple Cider Vinegar
1 tsp Sugar
2 leaves fresh Sage, slivered
1/2 tsp Olive Oil
1/4 tsp Mustard Powder
generous twists of Salt and Pepper

The Gist:

You can use a food processor for this, but I don't - hand-cut ingredients in slaw makes it less paste-like and less uniform. It shouldn't take long to cut your veggies by hand.

Combine the salad ingredients in one bowl and the dressing ingredients in another. Whisk the dressing and pour it over the salad. Refrigerate for 15 minutes or so and serve. The quantities above will serve 2 people as sides or 4 on sandwiches. Personally:
...I like it with bacon and muenster and a little bit of mayo on wheat.