Carrots, Spice and Everything Nice.

This crave-able dish from famed NYC restaurant, ABC Kitchen, is served as a side dish, but might be your new favorite main.

Carrots

In New York City, blocks away from the famed Union Square Greenmarket, one of my favorite restaurants in the country opens its doors from Noon-10pm, 7 days a week, rain or shine and open to all. The menu features local produce, seasonality and too many incredible dishes to choose from - so, why did I choose this one? A carrot salad? Well, as the expression goes, “If you know, you know.”
Welcome to ABC Kitchen.

The chef-owner, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, a culinary icon known around the world, is known for his seasonal cooking, with a focus around “if it grows together, it goes together” but blends bold flavors to augment, shape and redefine what we know about certain ingredients. I, personally, love carrots and remember clearly the first time I tried his Roasted Carrot and Avocado Salad. The carrots were perfectly cooked and spiced with warm North-African spices, marinated with citrus and served with textural contrasts like crunchy pepitas and soft avocado - I’m salivating just thinking about it.

Dishes like these are a masterclass in texture and are a huge reason why I love to cook. Even if you think it’s simple, a lot of technique has to happen to create this dish. So, as a start to this new series, I figured this could be a wonderful recipe to share! I found this recipe from the NYT Cooking website, but made a few small tweaks of my own, for personal preference. Isn’t that the point of cooking?

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Roasted Carrot and Avocado Salad - ABC Kitchen

Makes 4 servings
Ingredients:
3 garlic cloves, grated into pulp on microplane
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
1/2 teaspoon chili flakes
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar (or apple cider vinegar)
4 tablespoons olive oil
1# (16oz) medium-sized carrots, peeled and halved lengthwise
1 orange, halved
1 lemon, halved
1 avocado, pitted, peeled and sliced thinly
1/2 cup English cucumber, finely diced
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
1 cup of sprouts (I used broccoli sprouts from Whole Foods)
3 tablespoons of sour cream
5 tablespoons pumpkin seeds (pepitas), roasted and salted

Method:
1. Preheat your oven to 400ºF/200ºC.
With a small food processor or mortar process your garlic, cumin seeds, thyme, chili flakes into a paste and season with some salt and freshly-cracked pepper. Add your vinegar and a couple tablespoons of olive oil and mix well into a rich paste.
2. After cleaning, peeling and halving your carrots, fill a large pot of water that is generously salted “like the sea.” Once the water comes to a rolling boil, add your carrots and blanch for 2-3 minutes until just tender enough to easily insert a knife or cake tester through. You will be roasting these still, so only cook enough to par-cook them. Remove from the blanching water and shock in cold ice water to inert the cooking process.
Next, add them to a large mixing bowl and toss with your spiced paste until thoroughly coated. Place them on a parchment or foil-lined baking sheet and place your halved oranges and lemons on top, cut side down, and roast until the carrots are roasted and tender - about 25-30 minutes.
This will result in a better texture than roasting alone, which might leave your carrots dry, rubbery or over-cooked.
3. Remove the citrus from the roasting pan and squeeze out the juices until you have roughly 1/2 cup of juice. Add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the citrus juice and season with salt and pepper to make a roasted citrus vinaigrette, which you can spoon over your carrots.
4. To plate, smear a few tablespoons of your sour cream across the bottom of your platter. Arrange your carrots on top, along with your sliced avocado and your sprouts or microgreens. Adding small piles of English cucumber is one of my additions that I love, giving a textural crunch that is bright and refreshing, while adding your roasted pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds on your avocado. Finish by drizzling your roasted citrus vinaigrette over the dish and season with a crack of fresh pepper and some flakey salt, if you desire.
This recipe is truly perfect from the first to the Last Bite.

What’s Next?

This platform is new for me, but new in an exciting way.
It’s allowing me the opportunity to get back to my roots of photography and writing and brings me back to a time when LiveJournal was as popular as TikTok.

My hope is to find my people - those exhausted, hungry Millennials who grew up doing things a bit slower. Folks that choose to savor the efforts of others, rather than return to our 3-second society, whose attention has been reduced to swiping on instinct, rather than with purpose.

If this post excites you in any way, or if you decide to make this recipe, please share with others. Tag me in your posts or tell your friends in your stories. Every single person who finds this account helpful makes this worth continuing.

So, the only question is - What’s next?
Let me know in comments or reach out to me on Instagram!

-Bobby