Salade de carottes râpées

There are such lovely fresh carrots for sale at all the farmers markets lately; I can't resist them. It's a perfect time to make this classic French grated carrot salad. It's so simple, fresh and tasty. You can order this in pretty much any cafe or restaurant in France and it's almost always good (and cheap!)

While you can certainly use a food processor with a grating attachment to grate the carrots, I think they turn out a little better if you grate them by hand. It may just be the blade on my Cuisinart but I find that the grating attachment tends to tear the veggies up a little in the process of grating them. So I did these by hand though my right arm started aching about 2/3 of the way through and my husband obligingly offered to finish up the grating for me (he's very nice like that.)

Although I stuck with the traditional French preparation in the recipe below, you are welcome to shake things up a bit by adding dried currants and/or thinly sliced red onion or some grated beets to the salad or throwing a little Dijon mustard into the dressing, etc. Bon appetit!

Salade de Carottes Râpées (Grated Carrot Salad)

Serves 6

Ingredients

* 7 large, sweet carrots, peeled

* 1/2 bunch of large, flat-leaf parsley (Italian works better than curly), rinsed and dried

* Juice of 2 lemons

* 2-3 Tbsps olive oil

* 2 tsps sugar or honey

* Sea salt to taste

* Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Directions

1.Grate the carrots as finely as possible and place in a medium-sized bowl (you want it to be big enough to make it easy to toss everything together with the dressing.) Coarsely chop the parsley and toss it in with the carrots.

2. Make the dressing by whisking together the lemon juice, olive oil, sugar and salt and pepper until the sugar and salt have dissolved. Drizzle it over the carrot/parsley mixture and toss to coat. Taste and adjust the seasonings as needed (you may want to add more lemon juice, salt or pepper).