Vietnamese Carrot Salad

The only time consuming portion of making this light and refreshing salad is the grating of 5 or 6 carrots. Cafe Drake used a vegetable peeler for a ribbon effect, but you could cut the time in less than half with a food processor and simply shred the veggies. This salad keeps for a week in its marinade, and is wonderfully tasty and decorative atop almost any dish imaginable – above, we piled over toasted Sloppy Joes for a piquant punch and to add color to a (very brown) Austrian goulash (recipe in posting above).

2 cups of water / 4 T. white vinegar / 2 T. sugar / 1 crushed clove of garlic / 1 t. salt / 1 t. cayenne pepper or dried red chiles / 5-6 carrots

1. In a bowl combine the water, vinegar, sugar, garlic salt and chile pepper. Stir well until sugar dissolves.


2. Peel the carrots and shred or grate.


3. Add carrots to vinegar mixture, stir well and refrigerate overnight. If time is short, leave the carrots in marinade for at least 4 hours at room temperature.