Carrot-Asparagus Salad

Yesterday I was volunteering at the Ferry Building Farmers Market Info booth, and on my lunch break I started roaming around looking at the goodies. I was very startled by the colors that were to be found in carrots!

Colorful Carrots

This vendor (I forget who!) was sending bunch of carrots that contained 4 different colors of carrots: white, yellow, orange and dark red-purple. I bought 3 of those bunches. I figured that it would look great in a salad! That same vendor had lemon cucumbers! I love those! So I bought 6. On my way back to the Info booth, I came across baby fennel. I thought it looked cute (don’t judge, I like cute foods) so I bought some.

After a while back in my Info booth, I started looking at the vendor across from me. He had thin and thick asparagus and I was trying to decided if I wanted to stir fry or grill asparagus, but wait there are purple asparagus. Huh? I kept looking, and trying to find a way to escape my booth as his supplies were quickly dwindling. I finally grabbed on of those guys who work at the market to have him cover for me and bought the last two! The vendor told me that those are tender and sweeter than the green ones and can be eaten raw. He also told me that cooking too long would leach the color out of them.

I took it all home and today I decided to do something with it. My idea was a salad, but I was making it in the morning to eat at night. I didn’t want the veggies to dry out. I decided to just lightly steam the carrots and the asparagus to brighten the colors. That worked well for the carrots, but it leached out most of the purple out of my asparagus. Next time I am not steaming them at all!

Still my salad turned out to be delicious and I think, beautiful. I had planned to use cilantro and green onion in it, but after tasting the baby fennel, I decided to use flat leaf parsley instead of the cilantro, and to skip the green onion altogether. Here’s how it went:

Carrot-asparagus Salad
4 servings

2 bunches of  thin carrots, quartered length-wise
1 bunch purple asparagus, sliced
1 baby fennel, thinly sliced
Handful parsley, chopped
1 tsp lemon zest
1 tsp olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste

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2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp mashed garlic

Steam carrots for 2 minutes, rinse in cold water to stop cooking, drain well and dry with a paper towel. Put in a large salad bowl. Steam asparagus for 1 minute, rinse and drain well. Add to the bowl.

Add fennel, parsley, zest, 1 tsp olive oil, salt and pepper. Toss well, refrigerate.

Mix dressing ingredients very well, add to salad at the very last minute.

Nutritional Information* (about 1 cup): Calories 139.6; fat 4.0g; Carbs 25.6g; Fiber 7.7g; Proteins 3.2g.

Source: My brain!

*Nutritional information is calculated using various online calculators and given for informational purpose only. I cannot guarantee 100% accuracy.

I totally love those dark carrots! They are so neat looking with their darker outer skin and paler inside flesh. Very cool looking!

That salad was really satisfying, I think my decision to make it with parsley rather than cilantro was a good one. I served it for lunch with lemon cucumber and a chopped tomato. For dinner we had it with bulgur and chicken. A winner for sure! And healthy to boot! ;op