The All-Purpose Carrot Salad

Carrot salads are just about my favourite - so versatile, and good for you, and what a gorgeous hit of colour on your table! My whole family loves them - child included. Plus, if you're a thrifty organic girl like me, you'll know you can (often) stride into your favourite natural foods store or farmer's market and buy large bags of perfectly-tasty "juicing" carrots for a fraction of the price of the pretty ones. Because when it comes to carrots, pretty has nothing to do with sweetness or flavour. And ...

Less money on organic carrots = more money for coffee. You think so, too, I know you do.

So what to do with all these carrots?

My current favourite salad is so simple:

Using your hands (or a fork), mix shredded carrot + sea salt + a dash of olive oil + a dash of rice vinegar (or white wine vinegar). Then, before serving, add a sprinkling of aniseed.

If you like seaweed, you might try this one - a mix of carrot and arame - though, I'll be honest with you ... I now prefer to use toasted, shredded nori sheets instead of arame in that one. I've amended the recipe to include both options. Gotta keep it simple, and I almost always have nori in my pantry. Arame? Not so much.

And then you can go nutty - a very basic carrot salad with almonds for added texture and flavour (and one of my earliest posts! check out the difference in pictures ... whoa ...)

Basically, you can make a great salad using carrots + a light vinaigrette + any of the following:

• toasted, crushed nuts
• toasted seeds
• fresh mint, basil, parsley, or thyme
• dried aniseed, oregano, or (toasted) cumin seeds
• flavoured or nutty oils

For variety, use carrots of different colours - yellow, purple, orange. Or experiment with texture - instead of shredding, you can use a peeler to create long, wide ribbons of carrot, like Sarah did here. Or use your julienner to create a nest-like mess of carrot.

Long live the carrot salad.
Amanda xx