Good Eats: Mongolian Carrot Salad Recipe

October 22nd, 2013 • BY Erinn Morgan

Sasha Martin is cooking the world, literally, from A-Z. Through her website, Global Table Adventure, Martin is cooking 195 meals from 195 countries in 195 weeks. Beyond sampling—and sharing—delish dishes from around the globe, Martin’s goal is to promote peace by asking us to all sit down at a “Global Table” and learn about one another.

Says Martin, “We create peace when we learn about each other, when we understand one another. We can’t create peace alone. We must set a Global Table and invite everyone to sit down together as one family.” Martin’s own family was also a driving force to launch her ethnic cuisine adventure—she longed to jump-start her own cooking, cure her husband’s “Picky Eater Syndrome,” and raise her then 7-month-old daughter with tastes if the world.

The Global Table taste bud adventure is currently in its 192nd week (with four weeks remaining). This week: the sights and tastes of Vietnam. Each week, Martin delivers information on the country’s cuisine, plus menus, recipes, and techniques for cooking that country’s dishes.

To celebrate her culinary sojourns, quest for peace, and truly set a Global Table, an event featuring dishes from all 195 countries set up on a 200-foot stretch of tables was held near Martin’s home in Tulsa earlier this month at the Philbrook Museum of Art. Her adventure (and recipes) will also be published in a book next year by National Geographic.

Here, Martin shares one of her favorite Global Table recipes for a simple yet delectable carrot salad recipe from Mongolia. Want to learn more? Read our interview with the global chef below.

Mongolian Carrot Salad Recipe

Ingredients:

1 lb carrots, grated or julienned (on a mandolin is easiest)
1/2 cup raisins, soaked in hot water

For the dressing:

1 large clove of garlic, grated
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons of sugar
salt & pepper, to taste (be sure to use plenty of salt to bring out the flavors)

Method:

After picking up some carrots and raisins at the local market, take a boat ride to a beautiful castle.

Set up your kitchen in the highest tower.

One should always make carrot salad in castles.

To get started, soak the raisins in very hot water until plumped up (about thirty minutes).

Meanwhile, wash and peel a pound of carrots. Listen to some music while you work (perhaps some throat singing with wild Gobi Desert dancing?).

For the rest of the method for this royal carrot salad, please go to Global Table here.

WM: What was the inspiration for Global Table Adventure?

Sasha Martin: After having seen a lot of the world (I saw 12 countries before I was 18) and attending CIA for one year, I moved to Tulsa for an internship in a food science R&D lab and I met a man and fell in love and had a family. But, I suddenly found myself missing travel and the variety of foods I had around the world. When I was living in Europe you could just hop over the border of any country and experience a different culture. But now I couldn’t just grab that backpack and go. Launching Global Table Adventure was a way to temper all that wanderlust.

WM: How did you feel about starting off on this journey? And, how has your feeling about it changed over the course of the journey? 

Martin: In the beginning I was sprinting out of the gate and not considering this was almost a 4-year project. My daughter Ava was still napping several times a day back then and I was cooking like seven dishes from Ethiopia in a day. Then, I realized I needed to slow down and do really family friendly recipes.

WM: What is it about food that is so revealing about a place or a culture?

Martin: For me its as much ritualistic as it is about what spices we’re using, whether you eat on the floor in a circle with a communal platter, or maybe doing a tea ceremony where you boil the tea five times and add sugar. It seems like everywhere in the world there’s ways people bond over food. In the end, we’re all just trying to feed our families.

WM: How has your daughter Ava embraced (or not embraced) the journey?

Martin: She was really easy as a baby—so trusting and so open minded and she would eat the things you would just balk at, like strong fishy flavors. But, as she grew older she had definite preferences as a toddler, but whenever she helped make the food she always wanted to eat it. She really had a lot of fun with Laos. They have a soup that’s a lot like pho from Vietnam but its spelled foe. It’s raw beef in a bowl with rice noodles and you pour on boiling hot broth at the table, plus add cilantro, tomatoes, and fish sauce.

WM: What’s one of your favorite countries/meals?

Martin: Well, they are all my children, but I did love this dish from Togo with grilled chicken marinated legs in ginger and garlic served with a tomato-based polenta. I thought, ‘Wow, this country is new to me and it’s such an easy, delicious meal.”

Kamagra oral jelly Online something to buy the most convenient way. He doesn’t demand from you any actions except how to visit the website. And in separate with goods necessary to you to put the end. To specify your address and to wait for the supplier to whom you will give money.