Fennel and Red Cabbage Salad

I've been holding on to a small head of red cabbage from CSA share #7 for a few weeks now, so I thought this might be a good time to try and use it up. Red cabbage is a great source of vitamins and minerals, including the antioxidant, Vitamin C. The thing about cabbage is that once it's cut, Vitamin C starts to disappear right away. Plus, it starts to wilt. So it's a good idea to use up the entire head of cabbage when possible, in order to maximize the health (and flavor!) benefits.

I had a bunch of oranges, pineapple, and apples stored in the fridge for sangria-making purposes (yum!), so when I happened upon a recipe for fennel and red cabbage salad with oranges, I decided to sacrifice a few of my sangria oranges for salad. Glad I did, because the salad turned out quite nicely. The original recipe called for things like pepitas, tamari, hemp seeds, and cilantro, none of which I had on hand, so I made a few modifications and tried to use up the random things I had lying around my kitchen. I also like keeping things simple and quick, to save time.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold my dumbed down fennel and red cabbage salad.

Fennel and Red Cabbage Salad
Ingredients:
- 1 small head of red cabbage
- 2 small fennel bulbs
- 2 oranges
- lemon juice
- olive oil
- balsamic vinegar
- salt

Recipe:
1. Wash and trim fennel bulbs. Reserve fronds and stalks for soup stock (stalk stock teehee) and garnish.
2. Wash and core red cabbage. If you're hungry, you could microwave the cores for a minute or two and eat them as a snack. Nom nom.
3. Slice the cabbage and fennel into thin strips, coleslaw style.
4. Drizzle the fennel strips with olive oil, lemon juice (I used the juice from a third of a lemon), and salt.
5. Slice orange segments into bite size pieces and add to the fennel mix.
6. If you're not eating the salad right away, store in the fridge and mix everything together just before serving/eating*. Keep the cabbage separate from the fennel so the red coloring doesn't leach into the fennel slices. Or the oranges. I imagine purple and orange in combination would turn a rather unappetizing shade of brown.
7. Toss the cabbage with the fennel/orange mix and then drizzle a bit of balsamic vinegar on top. Season with salt and pepper.
8. Garnish with a few fennel fronds.
9. Enjoy.

* If you're making lunch for work and you're short on tupperware (like me), you can wrap up the red cabbage in some saran wrap to keep it separate from the rest of the salad and put it on top of the fennel. Don't use foil, as the acid from the lemon juice might do funny things to your lunch :(

I had way too much red cabbage, so I just brought in the extra cabbage to work the next day, microwaved it, and added salt and pepper. Pretty tasty but it smelled pretty strongly of sulfur. Fortunately, my coworkers are accustomed to far more offensive smells, like fish and kimchi (we sit right by the microwave and the Korilla truck stops by every now and then), so I think I'm still on good terms with them. I hope.

CSA Share #11 is coming in tomorrow! I have a crapton of vegetables, but they're pretty storage-friendly, so I'll probably wait and see what I get in tomorrow's share before I cook any of the CSA leftovers. My inventory consists mostly of onions, garlic, jalapenos, and fennel stalks. I have a pint of frozen chicken consomme, so I might make some soup this weekend and freeze portions for later use.

On a somewhat (not really) related note, I had brunch with my friends at Clinton St Bakery down in the LES. Chocolate chunk pancakes with maple butterscotch syrup. I die. Haha. And the icing on the cake? When I walked in the door, I immediately noticed a sign hanging on the wall with a list of local farms that Clinton St. Bakery sources their fresh ingredients from. I excitedly pointed it out to my brunch friends, but I think my enthusiasm was a little one-sided. #foreveralone

CSA Share #10

Can't believe we're already at CSA Share number TEN. Crazy! But, here we are, and so are the tomatoes. The dry weather has been wilting the corn but the heat has been equally as oppressive to all but the mighty eggplant, according to our lovely Free Bird farming family. Extreme heat keeps tomatoes from producing carotenes, including lycopene, according to “The Mystery of Unripening Tomatoes," an article from the Cooperative Cornell Cooperative Extension newsletter. That's really too bad because I fucking love corn and tomatoes.

However, the tomatoes at Free Bird Farm conquered the heat and made their grand debut this week in the form of a pint of ping pong ball size tomatoes and a gorgeous beefsteak tomato. Happy to report that the ping pong tomatoes made a delicious accompaniment to dinner at work. I still think the hydroponic tomatoes my dad would bring home from his research lab win the all-around-tomato award though (he researched irrigation techniques, so never fear - the tomatoes were perfectly edible). I suppose it's unfair to compare heat-stricken tomatoes with greenhouse tomatoes. I'm sure if I were a plant, a greenhouse would be a bit more comfortable. Regardless, I'm just happy to have tomatoes.

If we get a lot more tomatoes in subsequent CSA shares, I fully intend to bring a bag of them to work and blend them into tomato milkshakes (YUM). My coworkers are incredibly skeptical of tomato milkshakes, but I am here to assure them that they are delicious and out of this world. My mom used to blend up milk, ice, sugar, and tomatoes in the summer. Odd combination but the frothy, strawberry-colored milkshakes would always hit the spot for me.

On to the CSA share.
- 1 pint small tomatoes
- 1 large tomato
- 1 eggplant (American)
- 2 fennel bulbs
- 2 jalapenos
- 4 onions
- 3 heads of garlic
- 6 oz baby salad greens

CWTC: if the previous three paragraphs haven't clued you in yet...the CWTC winner this week are the tomatoes.
TAV: fennel. I like fennel when I encounter it in restaurants, but I have yet to cook them myself. Excited! Although...the fennel fronds look alarmingly like carrot fronds...
WTF: onions. Oh dear. I still have two onions from previous shares sitting on my countertop. Six onions, one little Asian girl. Whatever shall I do? There's only so many ways to eat onions. On the bright side, at least they'll last for a while.

Plus, my little brother is in town and he eats lots of anything. I shall make him eat onions. Heh heh heh.