Y'ALL. Finger Salad is the wave of healthy food for the future. You involve every sense in the eating experience as you not only taste, & smell the food, & see the vibrant colors & hear the crunching & squishing & splashing, but you taste first with your fingers as you explore the endless variety of possibilities and texture combinations, first dipping a handful of bean sprouts & hearing yourself slurp to catch the sauce before it finds its way down your chin, & the squeaky, turgid *crishhh* of the sprouts as you chew them. Then in the next bite a playful stack of sweet apple, bitter radish, juicy daikon, savory root, & a little hidden slice of fresh jalapeno, all dipped in the powerful sour/salty/ginger/umame sauce, feeling a drip tickle as it races towards your wrist as you sink your teeth into the most satisfying crunch imaginable. Chase a slippery chunk of mango around your plate & reward yourself with a mellow, sweet escape from the heat that's begun to crawl its way towards your ears, & kiss the sticky juice from the tips of your fingers with a satisfying *SMACK*.
This is what food is about. You can get the pickiest eaters to try a whole lot of stuff if you make an event, an adventure out of it.
So try it out! LET YOURSELVES GET MESSY! If you make a production out of it, your kids will be scandalized by the mess their parents are making of themselves and dive fingers first into new vegetables & flavors! (Especially since all the veggies in this recipe have been pre-curated for texture-averse persons).
The prep doesn't take long at all of you have a mandolin 😉.
This one features:
- baby bok choy
- bean sprouts
- mango
- jicama
- daikon radish
- granny smith green apples
- whatever that cool lacy Asian root is with the holes in it (not fennel, the other one)
- fresh jalapenos
- imitation crab meat
- seared ahi tuna crusted in garlic, sesame, & cracked black pepper
The sauce for dipping is made from:
- fresh lime juice
- minced shallot
- minced garlic
- loosly chopped cilantro
- pureed ginger
- jalapeno seeds
- soy sauce
... I just stirred them together with a spoon & bruised the cilantro & crushed the garlic a little with the spoon against the bottom of the bowl as I stirred. It's an INTENSE sauce, so you may want to water it down a bit for a blander palate.
