Pickled Salad

Necessity is the mother of invention. In this case, necessity was a gnarly vegetable and a hot day.

I didn't invent the perfect summer salad, but I did come to it on my own, on the first hot day in May, as the farm reached its fourth week without rain. I'd been hired to cook lunch for the farm crew, and it sounded like an ideal job: use just-picked produce to make lunch on busy harvest days for a crowd of appreciative, hungry farmers? Sign me up.

It was a blissful job in many ways - I worked with the best ingredients, took home as much produce as could fill the backseat of my Corolla, and had permission to try as many new dishes as I wanted. No rules - just a very, very restrictive budget.

I filled my menus with big, substantial dishes to fuel the crew. Hearty salads full of roasted beets and sweet potatoes were common, as were big bowls of pasta, and rice and beans. There were plenty of greens from the early spring pickings, so a green salad with a vinaigrette often showed up on the table, too.

I ALWAYS made sure to have something sweet. I became a master of thick, hearty cakes, baked first thing in the morning, so the crew would have a pleasant snack midmorning. Cakes with ground up apples, sweet potatoes, ginger and cinnamon. Or, as spring went on, rhubarb and strawberries with cardamom. My one luxury: chocolate chips. They’d eat anything with chocolate.

Back to the hot day.

The kitchen was already past 90 degrees by 9am, in part because I'd baked a cake and had the oven going at full blast. I knew my main produce options for the day would be light greens, lettuces, herbs, and the dregs of last year's root crops, including some giant, gnarled kohlrabi.

Kohlrabi at its best is light, crisp, juicy and a touch sweet - it can be cooked or eaten raw. This was not kohlrabi at its best. This was kohlrabi after a winter of hibernation among surlier vegetables, and it was gnarled, tough, and cranky.

I shredded it into submission, and looked at my pile of potential slaw. With no mayonnaise, and only cider vinegar at my disposal, I decided to make a hot dressing of cider vinegar, sugar and salt. I brought the ingredients to a boil, and threw them over the slaw, tossing it quickly. Then I crammed it into the fridge and nearly forgot about it until lunchtime.

The farmers came in hot, dusty, and exhausted. I laid out the rest of lunch - a cold spiced black bean salad, a green salad, and a big jug of switchel, the Yankee answer to lemonade which contains ginger and honey and apple cider vinegar instead of lemon. I put the slaw on the table with the note "pickled slaw," just to see what would happen.

The next time I looked, it was gone. Completely. A heaping bowl, scraped bare. I had a hit.

Since then, I've made dozens of pickled salads for the farm. They're especially great for the hot days, when everyone needs something cold, substantial, and plenty salty to replenish what they lose during a hard morning's work!

To make a pickled salad, you need only follow this formula:

• TWO PARTS SOUR (vinegar of any kind, or citrus juice)
• ONE PART SALT (kosher salt, soy sauce, or fish sauce work)
• ONE PART SWEET (sugar, honey, agave, maple syrup...)
• OPTIONAL: SAVORY (onion, garlic, herbs?)

The instructions are easy:

1. Put all your ingredients in a pot.
2. Bring to a boil.
3. Make sure salt and sweet are dissolved.
4. Pour hot over your vegetables.
5. Let sit for anywhere between 20 minutes and 12 hours in a refrigerator or cooler. (If you're going to leave it to sit for a long time, drain off the excess dressing after 1 hour.)
6. Serve, with enjoyment as everyone marvels at how brilliant you are.