Roasted Carrot & Avocado Salad With Citrus Dressing
- Ready In:
- 2hrs 10mins
- Ingredients:
- 21
- Serves:
-
4
ingredients
- 500 g carrots, approximately (allow 3 carrots per person for a main meal)
-
Dressing
- 1 orange, halved
- 1 lemon, halved
- 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
- extra virgin olive oil
- sea salt, crushed
- fresh ground black pepper
-
Spice Paste
- 2 teaspoons whole cumin seeds
- 1 -2 small dried chilies, crumbled or 1/2 teaspoon fresh chili pepper, minced
- sea salt
- fresh ground black pepper
- 2 -4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced
- 4 sprigs fresh thyme leaves, picked (about 1 tablespoon of leaves)
- extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
-
Salad
- 3 ripe avocados
- 4 -6 slices bread (Jamie used ciabatta, I used Turkish bread, any good quality bread will do)
- mixed salad green (I just used rocket, arugala)
-
Garnish
- 3⁄4 cup sour cream
- 4 tablespoons mixed seeds (I used sunflower seeds and pepitas)
- extra virgin olive oil
directions
- Don't peel the carrots.
- First, make the herb and spice paste for the carrots.
- In a mortar, combine the cumin seeds, chilli, salt and pepper and smash up with a pestle. Add the garlic and thyme leaves and pound until you have a paste-like consistency. Now add just enough extra virgin olive oil to cover the paste, together with 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar. Mix together.
- Preheat oven to 180C (350F).
- Cook carrots in boiling, salted water for about 10 minutes or until almost cooked - run a sharp knife into one and it should push through without too much resistance.
- Drain carrots, pat dry with kitchen paper, and put into a roasting tin.
- Pour the spice paste mixture over the carrots and rub in well with your hands.
- Place the roasting tin in the oven and bake carrots for 30 minutes, then add the orange and lemon halves to the tin.
- Bake for another 15-30 minutes until carrots are well roasted and the skins are golden brown.
- (Jamie puts the fruit and the carrots in together, and roasts the lot for 30 minutes. I found this wasn't long enough to get the carrots well roasted and when I left them in longer, the orange and lemon dried out a bit - so the above method is my compromise.).
- While the carrots are roasting, halve the avocados, remove the seeds, scoop out the flesh and cut into wedges.
- Place avocado wedges into a large mixing bowl or salad bowl.
- Heat a medium sized frying pan over a medium heat on the stove and add the seeds. Toast seeds in the frying pan, tossing frequently, until lightly browned. Remove to a small bowl until needed.
- In the same pan, add a good couple of swigs of olive oil and toast your bread slices on both sides. Remove to a plate until needed.
- Now, remove the roasting tin from the oven.
- Using a pair of tongs, squeeze the roasted orange and lemon halves into a bowl (don't worry if some pulp falls out too).
- Add an equal amount of extra virgin olive oil to the bowl along with a tablespoon of red wine vinegar, and season with some crushed sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and mix well.
- Add the roasted carrots to the avocados in the bowl and pour over the dressing.
- Now roughly tear up the toasted bread slices and add to the salad.
- Add the mixed greens and toss the lot together.
- Divide salad between four plates or bowls, spoon a dollop of sour cream on the top of each, sprinkle with the toasted seeds and finish with a little drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.
Questions & Replies
Got a question?
Share it with the community!
RECIPE SUBMITTED BY
<p>Above: Slideshow of our garden at Avalon Slideshow of our recent holiday at Woodgate Beach, South-East Queensland, Australia. Hi! I'm Kookaburra, from Australia. First, a promise. I will only post recipes on this site which I've made myself and to which I would personally give a 5 star rating - what you give them is up to you ;-) I look forward to receiving your feedback. If you look at my reviews, they're all 5 stars. That doesn't mean I give 5 stars to every recipe I try. I'm just not interested in giving poor ratings to anyone else's recipe because I accept that different people have different tastes. So, I've decided that I'll only review those recipes which I really love and which I'd make again and recommend to friends. If a recipe meets that criteria - even if it needs a bit of 'tweaking' to match my tastes, I'll give it 5 stars. If not, I'll just delete it from my recipe book and no hard feelings. I'm not advocating this as the 'right' approach. I just decided I needed a consistent strategy for rating and this is mine. I'm passionate about cooking - and eating! What I look for in food is something that 'zings' in the mouth. I like lots of taste - I'm not a big fan of subtlety. I don't often cook recipes exactly as written. I like to experiment and adapt things to my own taste. A retired marketing executive and academic, I live with my elderly (but thoroughly modern) mother in a tiny mountain village at the edge of the rainforest. I'm female, happily single, in my mid-40s and boast the Rubenesque figure of a passionate cook! Avalon, our 'story-book' cottage, overlooks a small lake. As I sit at my computer or work in the kitchen, I'm serenaded by a cacophany of native birds - including a very fat family of kookaburras! We have quite a large property and are lucky to have vegetable gardens and a variety of fruit and nut trees. I look forward to sharing recipes on Recipezaar with family, friends and friends I've yet to meet. last minute flight</p>