Carrot Ginger Dressing

My oven’s been broken, so I’ve been doing minimal cooking. Many of my meals have been steamed rice, pan-fried chicken thighs, and iceberg lettuce with this dressing.

This lands on the axis of so many things I look for when cooking and searching for recipes: easy-to-find and inexpensive ingredients, simple procedure, big flavors, versatile, colorful, nourishing…it hits in all the right places.

I never knew how much I loved iceberg lettuce until I started making this. This dressing plus iceberg lettuce in the fridge equals an instant crunchy, hydrating, zippy salad and side dish. Amended with fermented carrots and julienned radishes and it’s really perfect.

The dressing lasts for a week or two and seems to get better—mellower and more cohesive—after a day or two in the fridge.

Try combining it with kewpie (4 parts carrot-ginger dressing to 1 part mayo) for a richer, more savory dressing or accompaniment to chicken or fish.

Little tricks for processing ginger as painlessly as possible: peel with a spoon, and store your peeled ginger in the freezer. Microplane it directly from frozen—it’s so much easier and far less likely to jam your microplane with ginger fibers!

7 ounces carrots, roughly chopped

4 ounces onion, roughly chopped

2 tablespoon ginger, peeled and microplaned

2 tablespoon sugar

¼ cup tamari or soy sauce

½ cup rice wine vinegar

¼ cup olive oil

Combine all ingredients together in a personal sized blender and process until mostly smooth. The texture of this dressing is always going to be a little chunky, so don’t worry about getting it perfect.