Maggie's Spring Carrot Salad

If you read my last post, you'll know that our awesome CSA has been giving us lots of carrots. The past two weeks, we've also gotten some beautiful French breakfast radishes. One of the things I was so excited about with our CSA is that it would force me to explore new (or in this case, new uses) for veggies. Enter this salad. 

Apparently, shredded carrot salads are common in other parts of the world, but Americans don't eat them that often. I don't know why that's the case, because this salad was so easy and delicious. The only thing ingredient I don't keep on hand is the green onions, which is easily remedied. This salad comes together in no time with the aid of a shredding disc for a food processor. As the weather gets warmer, I'm thinking that this will be making an appearance on our menu more frequently and might even go to some warm-weather pot lucks. 

Maggie's Spring Carrot Salad
Ingredients
2 c. shredded carrots
2/3 c. shredded radish
6 green onions, chopped fine
3 T. lemon juice
3 T. canola oil
1/2 tsp. white vinegar
1 tsp. agave nectar
1/4 tsp. white pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. dried parsley

Directions
1. Using your food processor, shred the carrots and radishes.
2. Combine the carrots, radishes, and chopped green onions in a small bowl.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together all of the other ingredients to make a vinaigrette. Pour this over the veggies.
4. Let sit for anywhere from 15 minutes to overnight before serving.

Helpful Hints

• You can certainly put other ingredients in this salad. Some chopped celery might be nice, or parsnips, or even some nuts or dried fruits. 
• When shredding the carrots, I made sure to cut them such that they could lay in the larger part of my food processor tube, which led to longer shreds. Without a food processor, a hand grater will work. It will just take far longer and you need to be careful about your fingers. 
• Green onions and scallions are the same thing, but are different from spring onions. Check out this informative post about the differences over at the kitchn.
• If you don't have white pepper, black will work just as well. White pepper is actually the seed of the berry that is pepper, whereas black pepper is the entire berry that has been dried. White pepper isn't quite as strong to me, so if you substitute black pepper, you will have more of a pepper taste on your palate. 
• Put some fresh herbs on top as a garnish. My dad suggested tarragon (not for me, thank you!) or cilantro (not for Shana!). Even just fresh parsley would be beautiful. 

The post "Maggie's Spring Carrot Salad" originally appeared on Maggie's LesVegan Kitchen.