Recipes

Warmed Fall Vegetable Salad

A grey misty day calls for watching 1950’s films and baking carrot cake muffins. But once the carrot cake muffins are baked, they like to seduce me. They call me every hour insisting I devour their sweet spiciness. Sometimes I can resist but it’s only a matter of time before I’ve consumed them all!

Like any obsessive relationship, we’ve had to take a hiatus. We’ll return to each other when we can have a more balanced and kind relationship.

In the interim, I can put the carrots to better use – roasted and caramelized, then tossed into a warmed fall vegetable salad. Paired with cauliflower, fennel, peppers and onion this is a much lighter take on the traditional root vegetable salad. The vegetables are roasted in orange juice to help bring out their natural sweetness.

The yellow pigment in the vegetables represents a spectrum of carotenoids. These are antioxidants which fight off damaging free-radicals in the lipid-space of our cells. That means more beautiful skin, more vibrancy and a faster brain.

Had I chosen the sugar-soaked carrot muffins, I would have inflamed my skin, slowed my brain function and fallen into a carb-induced coma. Carrots for roasted vegetable salads please!

Photo Credit: Dana James

Ingredients

  • 1 cup of cauliflower, thinly sliced
  • 2 organic carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
  • 1/2 red onion
  • 1 yellow pepper, sliced
  • 1 fennel bulb, sliced
  • EVOO
  • sea salt
  • juice of 1/2 orange
  • 1 tbs raw honey 
  • fresh herbs such as mint or cilantro

Instructions

Pre-heat oven to 375F.

Add EVOO to roasting pan. Add sliced vegetables. Drizzle with orange juice and toss in sea salt. Roast for 30 minutes. Add raw honey and toss vegetables. Roast for another 10 minutes until vegetables are soft and caramelized.

Remove from baking try and add to a salad bowl. Sprinkle with sea salt and fresh herbs such as mint or cilantro.

Hint: Roast 2 additional carrots which can be used to make Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s carrot and avocado salad with spicy seeds.