last saturday we went over to justin & megan’s for dinner. they were grilling pork tenderloin, and since they were doing the meat, we took dessert (raspberry supreme cheesecake from the pastry garden), coleslaw, and macaroni and cheese. (i’ll post my mac & cheese recipe soon.)

the coleslaw was incredibly good. it was a mishmash of a couple of recipes i found on the foodnetwork site (thanks to paula and alton) with some tweaking on my part.

feel free to try the original recipes, but i can almost guarantee they aren’t as good as this one:

the crunch

1/2 medium-size head green cabbage — regular or napa — shredded.

1/2 medium-size head red cabbage, shredded

3 medium carrots, shredded or diced or julienned … whatever you like

3 green onions, chopped on the fine side … the green AND white parts

1 red bell pepper, diced

1 cob of corn (cut off the cob)

1/2 cup roasted (but not salted or flavored) almonds, roughly chopped

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1 handful cilantro, finely chopped

TRICK: start with the cabbage. once you have the cabbage shredded, lay it out loosely on foil or wax paper or a cutting board … whatever. sprinkle 1-2 tsp of kosher salt all over the cabbage. lightly toss it all, and let it sit while you chop the rest of the crunchy stuff and make the dressing. (alton brown’s recipe instructs that the cabbage should sit, salted for three hours (!!!) and then rinsed thoroughly. i don’t rinse it, and i certainly don’t wait around for three hours; though, i am sure i am missing a sublime coleslaw experience.)

tell me this doesn’t look good …

the dressing

3/4 cup plain yogurt (we use low-fat yogurt from stonyfield farms.)

1/4 cup mayonnaise (we use “light” mayo.)

3 tbsp pickle juice (use whatever you like: 3 tbsp of kosher-pickle juice, or sweet-pickle juice, or some combination. we are lucky enough to have spacey tracy pickles available. we do two tbsp of juice from her sweet & spicy pickles and another tbsp of regular kosher pickle juice.)

2 tsp yellow mustard (i am sure there is room for experimentation here. honey mustard or dijon mustard or stoneground mustard … any of them would likely be tasty. we used plain old french’s, but we will try other types, i am sure.)

so it ain’t rocket science … chop everything up and mix it in a big bowl. once you have all the crunchy stuff well tossed, fold in the dressing. eat! enjoy! revel in your culinary expertise!