Easy carrot salad for summer

My mum used to make this salad when we lived overseas. The pace of life as an expat is slightly different from the UK. People are much more likely to have a ‘door-always-open‘ policy, and a ‘Potluck Supper‘ policy. They also have a ‘bring-a-salad‘ policy, which can be very tricky to negotiate. Salad on the face of it is all about the green stuff, and if you are not careful, you end up with twelves bowls of identical salad (ready-made not an option) on the table next to your barbecued-whatever, and that invariably means that the host gets lumbered with eating green salad for two weeks after the event.

Which perhaps is why my very clever mother never took ‘regular’ salad. Her staples were Mixed Bean Salad, Potato Salad and the infamous Carrot Salad. I loved it when I was growing up, and still do now, though I *may* have tinkered with her recipe. Again. Sorry Mum.

Happily for me, Waitrose sell a bag of pre-grated mix of carrot & beetroot. You can just grate half a dozen carrots if you don’t have a Waitrose to hand. Dump your grated vegetables in a bowl. Add a large handful of plump juicy sultanas. In a pan, heat two tablespoons of Sesame Oil with two tablespoons of sesame seeds. Keep a very close eye on them because the little blighters burn in a heartbeat. When they are bubbling and start to look golden, remove from the heat and pour over the ingredients in the bowl. Mix well.

And that is it. From recollection, it’s even better on the second day when the flavours all mix and mingle, but ours never seems to last that long.