Asian Cuisine Recipes : Ingredients for Ginger Slaw

Welcome to Expert Village. I'm Chef A.J., and today I'm going to show you how to make a ginger slaw. It's a really easy salad that is great with any Asian food or even as a salad by itself, simple to make. I like this little thing because it's really great to make salad dressings with because you don't need to take out the blender or any special equipment, you can get these Tupperware, Pampered Chef, and probably in any Bed, Bath and Beyond. They also have little measuring on the side, so you actually could measure right into this. So we're going to make the dressing first. I have a 1/2 cup of organic brown rice vinegar. You can buy this seasoned or unseasoned. I always look for the organic brand and I also look for the brand that doesn't have the extra sugar, or any sugar for that matter, or salt. I feel I can always add these things if I want and I like the natural flavor to shine through. This particular brand that I'm using, it uses grape juice concentrate as a sweetener. I try to really stay away from the refined sweeteners, especially white sugar. So I have a 1/2 cup, which actually corresponds to the 1/2 cup here. Good. I am going to add a little sweet, I'm going to add some agave nectar. Agave is considered a low-glycemic sweetener, so many physicians feel it's suitable for diabetics in moderation. But what I like about it is it's much sweeter than sugar, so you actually use a lot less. It has a very neutral flavor so it doesn't overwhelm or overpower the recipe. It's made from the cactus plant, much that you would take maple syrup from a maple tree, agave is made from the cactus plant. It's also, for raw foodists, one of the sweeteners that they enjoy using. So, I'm going to put 1 tablespoon of that in. Again, if you like things sweeter, add more, less sweet, add less. I'm going to add 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon zest. What all lemon zest is is the outer skin of the lemon without the white bitter part called the pit. I'll just show you how to do that. You just need a little tool called a zester. You could actually use a grater on the finest thing. It basically takes off the yellow skin without taking off the bitter part, which is the white. Zest of any fruit, oranges, limes, it's very, very flavorful and it's great used in cooking and baking and in dressings. So, I have that. And in the last ingredient, and this is really simple, I try to always have no more than seven ingredients in my food. I like it to be easy, quick and uncomplicated because I really want to show people that making healthy food is not only delicious, but it can be really easy and hopefully fun. So I have some fresh ginger and I'm just peeling the skin off because it's kind of tough to eat the skin of the ginger root. But fresh is really, really best.