Fennel Apple Slaw

We ate this slaw today with a pulled pork in gravy, served on egg noodles. Every bite of pork was combined on a fork with a bite of the slaw and they were the perfect pairing—the rich fattiness of the pork cut with the sweet acidic tang of the slaw would have made any German proud. And just the hint of anise was unexpected but right on the money.

Ingredients

slaw
3 medium-sized fennel bulbs
3 honey crisp apples
1 small red onion

slaw dressing
1 cup apple cider vinegar (we used MadHouse ACV)
2 TBSP sugar
2 tsp salt
1 TBSP dijon mustard
2 TBSP olive oil
fresh ground pepper to taste
1/2 cup flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
1/2 cup fennel fronds, minus stems, roughly chopped

Directions

We shaved our fennel, apples, and onion pretty thinly with a mandolin. Not everyone has a mandolin, so this likely would have been just as good had everything been sliced into slender straws. Apples and onions are good at any thickness, but fennel is a fibrous vegetable ( a little more so than celery, though in that ballpark) so it should be sliced thinly and across its grain so that it doesn’t get stringy.

Throw all of your sliced or shaved veg and fruit into a large bowl.

Mix together your slaw ingredients in a separate bowl or, even better, a mason jar. If you do it in a mason jar, you just screw the lid on tightly and shake vigorously to mix. Then taste it and add ingredients to suit your taste. We made this up today on the spot—simply by adding ingredients and tasting and adding more ingredients and tasting and so on.

Always mix your slaw dressing separately and work i at it until you find a mix that strikes you as delicious and then, and only then, mix it into your slaw ingredients.

Try to make this a minimum of an hour before you intend to serve it and chill in the fridge . Two to three hours would be better. The vinegar will break the veggies down a little, softening them a bit as it flavors them. That’s a marker of a good slaw—the way the ingredients all start to loosen and soften a bit.