Roasted Carrot & Avocado Salad With Citrus Dressing

"This recipe is slightly adapted from Jamie Oliver's "Jamie at Home" cookbook and television series. It's a bit involved, but well worth it for a delicious and different main meal salad with a fabulous mixture of interesting tastes and textures. This would be perfect to serve to visiting vegetarians - as not even the meat eaters will feel deprived. Jamie uses a mix of differently coloured carrots, but I could only get orange ones and that was fine. I did try adding in some parsnips, but I wasn't happy with that addition, and will just stick to carrots in future. For a main meal, I'd recommend 3 medium sized carrots each. Don't worry too much about the quantities - use whatever quantities you prefer - adjusting to your own taste."
 
Download
photo by a food.com user photo by a food.com user
Ready In:
2hrs 10mins
Ingredients:
21
Serves:
4
Advertisement

ingredients

Advertisement

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!
Advertisement

Reviews

  1. This was so much better than the sum of the parts. Wow I wish there was a picture it looks so beautiful and it's so yummy. The paste that goes on the carrots and the seed topping make this incredible. Will make again and again.
     
Advertisement

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>
 
View Full Profile
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

Find More Recipes