I hope you're rolling gently into 2019
As I said on Twitter yesterday, I had great intentions to hit the ground running in the new year, but ...
So if you have also been easing yourself into the new year, join the club! We put all sorts of expectations on ourselves in January, but sometimes we have to remember it's a whole big year and January is just a twelfth of it. Let's all roll around like pandas this weekend, maybe make some forward motion, but not stress about it too much if we don't. (I mean, unless you're me and have a deadline next week but I intended to do a LOT not related to that deadline for the first two weeks of January and I'm going to let myself off the hook for most of that). Is that my excuse for how short this newsletter is? Maybe.
I will say, though, that I get the impulse to eat a million vegetables in January. This is absolutely not a diet thing, I promise (You are all beautiful, just as you are! When I recommend makeup or skincare it's because I personally enjoy using it and it makes me happy, you should do what makes you happy too!). It's more because I tend to spend most of December eating cookies for breakfast and charcuterie for lunch and cheese for dinner, and by the end of it my body is crying out for kale. This year was even worse, because I spent the last week of the year in Paris and boy did I eat cheese (I'm still mad at myself for not getting a picture of the enormous cheese table our hotel had in the breakfast buffet every morning, but don't worry, it was only because I was too busy eating all of the cheese). So it makes sense that the first thing I cooked in 2019 was broccoli slaw.
The origin of this recipe is from Smitten Kitchen, and I bless her for this, even though I've made a few changes to it. It's exactly the fresh, crunchy, flavorful thing I need in January, and it's easy to throw together (especially if you have a food processor). But my reason for tinkering with her recipe was to only make it easier for me: everything in the slaw itself is something I typically have on hand in the kitchen, which means I can make this for a weeknight or next day lunch (it keeps so well!) kind of meal without much planning. But the dressing calls for buttermilk, and the only reason I tend to have buttermilk in the house is after I've made a cake (like this cake I talked about in an old newsletter). So the second time I made this slaw, it was because I had everything to make it except for the buttermilk, but I did have greek yogurt. So out of sheer laziness (sometimes going to the store is the hardest thing in the world) I experimented with a greek yogurt based dressing instead of a buttermilk based dressing, and it turned out so well that it's how I usually do it now. And just this time I tried it with some thinly sliced apples in there, and I liked it so much I might do it like that from now on.
Broccoli slaw
2 heads of broccoli
1/4 cup chopped almonds or walnuts, toasted
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1 apple, sliced into matchsticks
1/2 small red onion or 1-2 small shallots, minced
Dressing
5-7 ounces full fat greek yogurt (you can use low fat if that's what you have, I usually have the full fat stuff)
5-6 tablespoons olive oil
3-4 tablespoons lemon juice or white wine vinegar
1 small shallot, diced
2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced very finely
1 anchovy, mashed (optional, but so much better with it, I promise)
Kosher salt
Black pepper
Put the diced shallot in a bowl (or a 2 cup measuring cup, which is where I usually make salad dressing), and add the lemon juice or the vinegar to it, along with the salt, and let that sit for a few minutes while you assemble everything else. Then add to that the garlic and the anchovy, then the yogurt and olive oil, and mix well. Start with the lesser amount of the yogurt, acid, and olive oil, combine well, and see what you think about the flavor and texture, and then add more of everything if you want (I always tend to use the highest amount of all three, but I also usually don't measure when I make this, and just mix and taste and add as it works for me).
Chop the broccoli (I use the heads and stems, and agree with Deb in the link to her recipe that it makes a huge difference to peel the stems first) and either put it through the slicer of your food processor or slice it thinly yourself. Combine in a big bowl with everything else. Add the dressing, some more salt and pepper, and mix well (I almost always start with only half the dressing, because it seems like way too much dressing at first, and then I mix and add more).
Enjoy! This keeps for a while, but I usually eat it all up within two days and then make another batch.
Jasmine
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