A favourite recipe of both Scott and mine this winter was one from
Jamie Oliver, whose casual and easygoing approach to cooking dinner is hard not to love. We've fixed this salad for everything from large potlucks, to Christmas dinner, to casual suppers at home. And on a recent visit to a posh and upscale restaurant, I'm sure I spied a variation of this salad on the menu. It's deliciously fresh and fragrant and can be a little bit spicy (if you kick up the chiles), yet still easy to source all ingredients in the middle of winter when good-looking vegetables can be hard to find.
Now, it is a salad recipe and generally I'm not one for complicated salads - but this one is actually worth the effort. The most complicated thing about this salad is the preparation of the carrots, which carries most of the flavour (and actually makes the dish much more hearty than your garden-variety side-salad). Once you've finished with the carrots, it's really a toss and serve situation. I've adapted the recipe slightly, but the original can be found in the "Jamie at Home" cookbook, which is filled with a whole lot of other delicious and inspirational recipes, plus encouragement to try growing a few veggies yourself. Highly recommended!
Roast carrot and avocado salad, with orange and lemon dressing
1 pound carrots, with their leafy tops
2 level teaspoons whole cumin seed
1 or 2 small dried chiles, crumbled
salt and peppper
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
4 sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves picked (*I've also used dried in a pinch, no problemo)
extra virgin olive oil
red or white wine vinegar
1 orange, halved
1 lemon, halved
3 ripe avocados
4 slices of cubed bread for crouton
1 bunch of greens (*we use watercress; frisee, arugula, radicchio are Jamie's suggestions)
4 tablespoons mixed seed, toasted (*we usually use pumpkin, sunflower and/or sesame)
Preheat the oven to 350F degrees. Parboil your carrots in boiling, salted water for 10 minutes, until they are very nearly cooked, then drain and transfer into a roasting pan. You should flavour them while they're steaming hot, so while the carrots are cooking, grind up the cumin seeds and chiles (*for this I use a grinder, Jamie uses a mortar and pestle), add salt and pepper to taste, and then add the garlic and thyme and smash up again untill you have a kind of paste. The idea here is to build up the flavours. Add enough olive oil to generously cover the paste, and the a good swig of vinegar. This will be like a marinade, a rub and a dressing all in one! Stir together, then pour over the carrots in the pan, coating them well. Add the orange and lemon halves, cut-side down. These will roast along with the carrots, and their juice can be used as the basis of the dressing. Place the roasting pand in the preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes.
While the carrots are roasting, halve and peel your avocados, cuting into wedges lengthwise and placing in a big bowl. Sometime before you remove the carrots from the oven, start toasting your croutons in the oven alongside the carrots.
When you remove the carrots from the oven, add them to bowl with the avocados (*along with any bits of the marinade/rub still in the pan). Using some tongs (*or whatever) squeeze the roasted orange and lemon into a separate bowl and add the same amount of olive oil plus a swig of vinegar. Season with salt and pepper, then pour over the carrots and avocados.
Final prep is to add the greens, seeds and croutons and then toss the whole thing together and serve.
Here's a recent version we prepared (with a side of fresh halibut, but minus the croutons because I forgot we were out of bread). I'm no food stylist so can't tell if this looks any good to you, but I can say that this version was really, really delicious.
