carrot and cilantro treat for all

method

I always think it’s brilliant if you can turn the humble carrot into anything remotely cool or credible, especially in the salad world. You deserve to have a medal if you can come up with something amazing. If you’re lucky enough to have vegetables in your garden you’ll know what I mean when I say freshness is everything. But those of you who haven’t got a garden should buy the freshest looking organic ones that you can find.

I use a mandolin to slice the carrots for this salad – it will give you long ribbony slices – but you can use a veg peeler or do it by hand with a knife instead. As long as your results are nice and crunchy, that’s all that matters.

This is really good as a starter, or try eating it with some little kebabs if you’re having a barbecue, or stuffed into some pita bread with sliced grilled chicken.

First of all, slice the carrots or cut them up into fine ribbons, matchsticks or batons. Put them into a salad bowl with the cilantro leaves and the sesame or poppy seeds. To make the dressing, finely grate the zest of the orange into a bowl. Add the orange juice, the juice of lemons and about 4 times that amount of extra virgin olive oil. Pound your toasted sesame seeds to a pulp in a pestle and mortar, then add to the dressing. Mix well, then season to taste with salt, pepper and possibly more lemon juice to make it nice and zingy so that you can taste it once you’ve dressed the salad. Once the salad is dressed, the flavor of the lemon will lessen, so get eating straight away.

serves: 4-6

ingredients

• 6 medium carrots, washed and peeled
• a large handful of fresh cilantro, leaves picked
• 4 teaspoons sesame seeds, toasted, or poppy seeds

FOR THE DRESSING
• zest and juice of 1 orange
• 2 lemons
• extra virgin olive oil
• 2 heaping tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper