Carrots, radishes and beets on the mandoline, toss with generous lemon juice, sprinkle of sea salt, then literally press the salad with a weighted bowl and let sit at least two hours.
After removing the weight, you can add optionals: fresh herbs, scallions, seeds, olive or sesame oil. It’s nice to have the groundedness of the root veggies, the pungency of the radish and the sourness of the lemon as we make our way closer to spring.
This salad is like beet-kvass-light, and in a few days you can taste the slow pickle and melding of flavors. Adding in pickled and fermented vegetables in late winter cues the digestion to move with a little more fiber-boosted oomph, moving through the normal stagnancy of winter. Is it spring yet? 🥕
This is also a good one for meditating in the kitchen. The mandoline, like any sharp tool, demands respect and attention. When you start to feel resistance with the blade, stop cutting that vegetable. It’s better to let the vegetable go than slice a finger. I chopped the ends of all the veggies by hand, and they could be added to the salad or used for another dish, depending on how important cut consistency is for presentation.