Plenty of Plenty: Spicy Moroccan Carrot Salad

I have always been a self-proclaimed “foodie.” From the minute I was able to eat solid foods I would accept nothing less than the highest quality food, never deigning to dine off the “kid” menus at restaurants. I quickly became a fat baby and a pudgy adolescent as my favorite activity has been, and still is, to eat. There is not a second of the day where I’m not thinking, dreaming or eating delicious food. That being said, I cannot cook for the life of me. Having grown up all my life with one of those miraculous moms who can somehow throw together delicious breakfasts, lunches, and dinners I never felt the need to at home; I could appreciate fine cooking and that was enough for me. Even coming to college, my freshman year dorm room didn’t exactly inspire me to hone my culinary skills, despite the incredibly mediocre, and oftentimes downright inedible, dining hall meals available to me on my dining plan. Surrounded by a plethora of incredible restaurants in Philly, I was perfectly content to eat out, or more accurately order in, whenever the need for real food struck. However, now that I have escaped the Commons purgatory and have access to a real kitchen, I feel that it is past time that I learn how to provide myself the food to which I’ve grown accustomed over the years, and so, after watching Julie and Julia far too many times, I’ve decided to cook my way through a cookbook.

The first step in my culinary journey was to choose a cookbook to cook through, and so, like any college student in search of inspiration and quick answers, I turned to Google, which quickly led me to a Buzzfeed article on the best cookbooks to cook through for beginners, recommended by famous, celebrated chefs. Having watched every season of Top Chef with my family, I went with the sage and beautiful Padma Lakshmi’s recommendation: Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi. The all-vegetarian cookbook appealed to my attempts to be healthy this year—the freshman fifteen is real, folks—and to my long-harbored desire to look like Padma Lakshmi. And so, armed with high ambitions and several overflowing FroGro bags, this Friday I cooked a real dish for the very first time.

It was, admittedly, a rather small undertaking: a spicy Moroccan carrot salad. However, I did not want to take on more than I was prepared for, and the list of intimidating ingredients such as “ground cloves” and “preserved lemon” as well as the instructions to “sauté” an onion (the most I had ever done was boil water) seemed like enough of a challenge for me. The recipe started off easily enough with peeling and chopping the carrots before placing them in a pan of boiling salt water to cook. While the ambiguous instructions to let simmer until tender but still crunchy caused me momentary anxiety (how crunchy is still crunchy?!), I managed to tackle the preliminary steps without too much difficulty. My faith was tested, however, when it came time to sauté the onions in a pan with oil for 12 minutes. While Ottolenghi specified that the onions should be soft and slightly brown, 12 minutes came and went without any change in color or texture. In retrospect, the pan was probably a tad too small and the heat a little too low initially; however, in the moment all that mattered was that I had already managed to screw up and it was only my very first attempt at admittedly a fairly simple recipe. Luckily, I managed to maintain my cool long enough to realize that the recipe was a mere guideline and cooking times were more of an estimate that an exact figure. The hardest steps behind me, all I had left to do was mix the rest of the ingredients as well as the carrots into the pan with onions, garnish with yogurt and cilantro and take a proud picture for my Snapchat story, obviously. Oh, and eat.

Spicy Moroccan Carrot Salad
Adapted from Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi

Ingredients:
2 lbs. carrots
1/3 cup olive oil, plus extra to finish
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 tsp sugar
3 garlic cloves, crushed
2 medium green chiles, finely chopped
1 green onion, finely chopped
1/3 tsp ground cloves
¼ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground coriander
¾ tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp sweet paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tbsp chopped preserved lemon
2 ½ cups cilantro leaves, chopped, plus extra to garnish
½ cup Greek yogurt, chilled
salt, to taste

Directions:
Peel the carrots and cut them into cylinders or semicircles about ½ inch thick, with all the pieces roughly the same size.
Place in large saucepan and cover with salted water, bring to a boil then turn down the heat and let simmer for about 10 minutes or until tender but still crunchy, drain in a colander and leave to dry.
Heat the oil in a large pan and sauté the onion for 12 minutes on a medium heat until soft and slightly brown.
Add the cooked carrots to the onion, followed by all the remaining ingredients except the cilantro and the yogurt.
Remove from the heat, season liberally with salt, stir well and leave to cool.
Before serving, stir in the cilantro to taste, serve in individual bowls with a dollop of yogurt, a drizzle of oil and garnished with extra cilantro.