Pickled Vegetable Slaw

Ingredients:

• Pickling liquid:
  • 1 C white wine vinegar
  • 2 Tbsp Salt
  • 2 Tbsp Sugar
  • 1 tsp. whole coriander
  • 12 (ish) whole black pepper corns
  • 1 clove garlic crushed or sliced
  • 1 arbol chili broken up
  • 2-3 allspice berries
  • 1 C cold water
• Big pile of julienned vegetables (about six cups)
  • 1 C daikon radish
  • 2 carrots
  • 1 red pepper
  • 1 orange pepper
  • 1 zucchini– fleshy part, no seeds
  • 1 English cucumber—fleshy part no seeds

Instructions:

1. In a small saucepan simmer vinegar, sugar salt and spices and garlic until the salt and sugar dissolve.
2. Let the vinegar cool/steep with spices (I just let it cool to room temp while I did other stuff.)
3. Dilute the pickling liquid with one cup water.
4. Julienne all the vegetables
5. Pack vegetables tightly into a quart jar
6. Pour completely cooled pickling liquid over veggies.
7. Eat mixed into salads or with a fork, out of the jar.

Cook’s Notes:

These are based on this recipe http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2013/06/pickled-vegetable-sandwich-slaw/. I added quite a bit of flavor to the pickling liquid and cut the sugar in half because I don’t like my pickles very sweet.

About all the julienning: I used a v-slicer, a sharp knife, and this julienne peeler http://www.amazon.com/Kuhn-Rikon-Julienne-Protector-Stainless/dp/B0000CEWJD which is kind of uni-tasker but made the carrots, daikon, cucumber and zucchini super easy to do. Less than ten minutes. I used my v-slicer to thinly slice the peppers, then julienned them with a knife. The Kuhn peeler makes a pretty fine julienne. So does the Julienne blade on the v-slicer. Next time I might slice everything with a slightly thicker setting on the V-slicer then julienne by hand so that veggies keep more of their individual character.

Because I don’t use the centers of the zucchini or the cucumber and because this might seem like a lot of waste, but the cucumber centers are good fiber for smoothies, and I put the zucchini scraps into my veggie-scrap stock collection. The vegetables listed above made 1 quart+ 1 half pint jar.

I’m going to use them in salads, in a ginger miso noodle soup, and in a cold buckwheat noodle salad. I also think they would make killer spring rolls with some rice noodles and basil.