It’s been mad hot this last few weeks and the idea of being in a hot kitchen cooking or even sitting eating hot food might not be so appealing, but then again not everyone gets excited at the idea of salad for lunch so we thought we’d share one of our favourite and quick to make salads so you guys can add it to your arsenal. It’s great on its own but goes amazingly with BBQ as well, a great summer dish.
Also a handy way of using up the carrots that are looking amazing in the raised beds just now. I’ll add a video at the bottom if you want an update on how the beds are looking.
So this all starts with the dressing.
- 40ml of olive oil
- 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
- Juice and zest of one lemon (or equivalent if you just have juice)
- 1 medium garlic clove, minced as fine as you can or grate finely
- 1-inch piece of ginger grated finely
- 1 tablespoon of honey
- Pinch of salt
You want to add everything to a container and mix it up well, it works great to put it all in an old jam jar and shake the hell out of it. I find that you get enough dressing for two huge salads from this recipe.
Now a tip I have learned. I love garlic and ginger, so I’ve made this a couple of times and gone overboard on the garlic and ginger. Try to resist. Adding too much of these neutralises the lemony flavour and actually makes the dressing taste bland. I know, makes no sense, adding more garlic and ginger should not make something taste bland, but you’ll have to trust me on this one. You want the fresh, lemony zing.
Ok so once you have your dressing shaken up and ready to go, the carrots.
All you need for a big bowl of this salad is
- 4 large carrots
- handful of chopped parsley
We are going to make the carrots into long noodles, to do this we’ve got two options in our kitchen, we have a hand peeler with a Julienne blade which will give you long thin slices of carrot (think short noodles). This is quick, easy to use and easy to clean. (There’s a link to these in our kitchen kit over on our Tee shirts and things page)
Or we also have one of those vegetable spiraliser machines. This works awesome as it gives you really long, super thin noodles and it uses up the whole carrot. But not so easy to clean.
So you want to turn the two carrots into noodles using your preferred method and add them to your favourite salad bowl, then simply pour about half the dressing over them and toss to coat.
We’ve found that the longer you leave this salad the zingier the dressing gets, so feel free to make it up a wee bit in advance of needing it and when you are ready to serve, toss through some of your chopped parsley and basically… nom!
We are Eli and Kate 