Food for Thought: Classic French Carrot Salad

31/08/2024 0 Comments
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Food for Thought with Suzanne Dunaway

Classic French Carrot Salad

Oh, how I love this recipe in summer, especially since I have access to such lovely, sweet carrots through my vegetable and fruit vendor whose produce comes from her papa’s amazing farm. They bring in fresh-daily vegetables and fruits that have spoiled me for anything else. And the carrots are king, retaining their flavor for long after others have withered and shriveled!

I have made a few little tweaks to the classic version of carrot salad and feel free to play with it yourself. In the USA, the classic salad, which I’m sure was borrowed from France long ago, contains raisins, not my first choice for dolling it up, but I do like a few chives stirred in, or a little tarragon.  Go easy on the honey because you want to retain the lovely cool and peppery carrot taste, especially in summer.

In hot weather I love to serve a salad supper, potato salad, carrot salad, a green salad with feta and chopped roasted almonds alongside the Colliourenc salad of greens, anchovies, hard-boiled egg, grilled sweet peppers, and haricots verts, cooked green beans. A great way to keep cool on these simmering days…

carrot food for thought



Recipe

Ingredients

  • 5-6 long, medium carrots, grated fine
  • 2 teaspoons Dijon or Ancienne mustard
  • 1 scant teaspoon honey
  • Juice of a lemon and a little grated zest
  • Dash of red wine vinegar
  • ¼ cup extravirgin olive oil
  • Salt and generous pepper
  • Chives, chopped fine (or parsley or fresh basil or lemon thyme)

carrots food for thought

Method

In a mixing bowl, whisk all of the ingredients except the carrots and then fold in the carrots until all are coated with the mustard mix. Serve very cold.

carrot food for thought

Meet the chef

P-O Life reader, Suzanne Dunaway, has cooked since she was 5 years old, when she made cinnamon pinwheels from her mother’s pastry dough.

She LOVES to cook. Some might say she LIVES to cook. The smells, the tastes, the textures…

She is a firm believer in simplicity and creates her recipes in the ethos of ‘anyone can cook’.

After years of experience in her own kitchen, cooking schools and private classes all over the world, in this weekly blog, Suzanne shares with us her PO-inspired creations.

With many strings to her bow, she is also an artist and columnist, with two published cookbooks.

Get a copy of her ‘No Need to Knead: Handmade Artisan Breads in 90 Minutes’ here  

Or her 5 star rated book ‘Rome, at Home: The Spirit of La Cucina Romana in Your Own Kitchen’ here

All content and recipes are copyright of Suzanne Dunaway.

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