Two Great Finally-End-of-Winter Salads

Editor’s Note: Molly made these two beautiful salads for the dinner party I brought my mac and cheese to. When I tasted how delicious they are, and also how wonderfully they complemented the mac and cheese, I asked her to write up the recipes for a post the same week as my mac and cheese post. And there you have it, a whole menu! Just add dessert. – CS

When deciding what to cook, I try to let two factors inform my decision: seasonal availability and the contents of my cabinets.  For a potluck dinner a few weeks ago that I knew would feature mac n cheese as the main entree, I chose to bring these two salads: Orange Salad with Red Onion and Olives, and Moroccan Carrot Salad with Ginger.  I settled on the former because navel oranges, which we all love,  are in season during winter, and on the latter because of the copious quantities in my cabinets of various spices that  the recipe called for. 

The orange and red onion salad is a Sicilian classic that appears frequently in my parents’ household during the winter months (though not Italian herself, my mother is a lover of Italian cooking).  To make this dish I used Alice Waters’ recipe in The Art of Simple Cooking as a general guideline, though with some modifications.  It took less than 20 minutes.  Here’s what you do:

Orange Salad with Red Onion and Olives
1. Peel 4 navel oranges and scrape off the white “skin,” exposing the prettier orange color
2. Slice the orange horizontally so that you get 5-7 wheel shaped segments
3. Chop them into bite size chunks
4. Chop a small red onion into thin slices, and mix with the orange
5. Make the vinaigrette:  Mix two tbsp orange juice with one tbsp red wine vinegar
6. Add salt and pepper to taste
7. Scatter a couple handfuls of black olives (I used kalamata) into the orange/onion mixture
8. Toss it all up with the vinaigrette

Ecce!

The Moroccan Carrot-Ginger Salad I also found in the Alice Waters book.  As mentioned above, I had all the necessary spices in-home already.  I made some adaptations to the recipe: cutting the carrots into larger fragments than she suggested (because I couldn’t be bothered to cut them into “match-stick size, 1/2 inch long batons”), marinating the carrots and spices for less time than she suggested (because I was running late), and chopping the ginger into fine pieces rather than grating it (because I find fresh ginger exceedingly difficult to grate).  These alterations posed no damage to the final product– although at one point, one of the dinner guests remarked, “Whoah– there’s ginger in this mac n cheese!”

Here’s what you do:

Moroccan Carrot Salad with Ginger

1. Peel four large carrots
2. Cut them into two-inch long sections and slice each section into 6 thinner strips
3. Cook in boiling water until almost tender
4. Drain and season with salt

5. Make your marinade, by mixing:
Half tsp each ground cumin and coriander
A 1-inch long chunk of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped or grated
A pinch of cayenne (cayenne is spicy, so by a pinch I really mean just a pinch!)

6. Pour this mixture over the carrots and toss.  Marinate in fridge for at least a few hours.  Just before serving squeeze over the carrots the juice of half a lime, pour on 2 tbsp olive oil, and throw on a handful of chopped cilantro.  Mix it all together.

***Note*** I have since made progress in grating fresh ginger.  If you have a cheese grater with holes of various sizes, grate the ginger through the larger holes.  If you use the smaller holes it gets stuck, but if you use the larger ones you can knock your grater against a plate a couple of times and most of the ginger will dislodge.