French Fridays with Dorie - Café-Style Grated Carrot Salad

This week´s recipe for the French Friday`s with Dorie group is Café-Style Grated Carrot Salad (“carottes râpées”).

The recipe is nice and simple, with only a few ingredients required. Apart from fresh carrots, of course, the recipe calls for a dressing made of Dijon mustard, honey, cider vinegar, oil, pepper, salt and optional chopped parsley, walnuts and raisins.

I have been making grated carrot salad for years, on a weekly basis, and it is our favorite “raw vegetable” salad. Today I decided to prepare the carrot  salad as a side dish to grilled pork tenderloin with  homemade zucchini chutney and oven-roasted potatoes.

The recipe for the zucchini chutney was developed by one of my favorite cooks, I saw it featured on his cooking show on Wednesday and tried it for the first time today. Wonderful. The carrot salad was a nice side dish to the other dishes and the different tastes harmonized well together. I made sure to use the same apple cider vinegar for the salad and the chutney and used a neutral salad oil (sunflower) - so no one taste overpowered the other.

In summary, Dorie´s Café-Style Grated Carrot Salad is simple, refreshing, healthy and delicious, not only for a hot summer day. It is great picnic fare as well as a wonderful side dish and a winner at our house.



Zucchini Chutney
(recipe translated by yours truly from a German recipe)

Ingredients

300 g zucchini (use a medium sized zucchini, or use more and double or triple the recipe)
1 tbsp ground fennel seeds
2 shallots
1 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 small bunch Italian parsley
fine sea salt
freshly ground pepper (to taste)


Preparation

1. wash the zucchini, cut ends off and slice thinly (using a mandolin makes it easy)
2. using a pestle and mortar, grind the fennel seeds
3. peel the shallots, mince finely
4. to a medium sized heavy saucepan (depending on the quantity of zucchini you chose to use), add the olive oil, heat on medium
5. add the zucchini, fennel, sugar and vinegar
6. bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat, then simmer uncovered, stirring every once in a while, over medium heat for about 25 minutes or until the zucchini have “broken down” and the chutney has reached the consistency of your choice
7. in the meantime, wash the parsley, dry and mince relatively finely
8. add the parsley to the chutney, cook for additional 3 minutes
9. add salt and pepper to taste



To see how the other Doristas prepared the Café-Style Grated Carrot Salad, please click here.