Grated Carrot Salad with Grilled Scallions, Walnuts, and Burrata

This recipe comes from Joshua McFadden’s cookbook Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables. We love this cookbook and highly encourage you to add it to your collection!

serves 4

Ingredients
2 bunches scallions (about 16), trimmed
3/4 pound carrots
1 cup walnuts, lightly toasted and chopped so that some are quite fine and some are still chunky
2 anchovy filets, finely chopped
1/2 cup very lightly packed roughly chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon dried Chile flakes
kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper
1 ball burrata or very fresh mozzarella

Instructions
Heat a cast-iron or other heavy skillet over medium-high heat (or heat a grill). Cut the scallions into lengths that will fit into the skillet, or leave them whole if you are grilling them. Char or grill the scallions - dry, no oil - turning them frequently, until they are blackened on the outer layer and very soft and collapsed and juicy inside, 8 to 10 minutes. Chop the scallions into 1/2 inch pieces and set aside.

As the scallions are cooking, prep the carrots by grating them on the large holes of a box grater or shredding them using a mandolin or other appliance. You can also cut them into julienne by hand, but the finer, the better, because the seasonings will penetrate more deeply into carrots cut into a finer gauge.

Put the carrots in a bowl and add the scallions, walnuts, anchovies, parsley, lemon juice, Chile flakes, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and about 20 twists of black pepper. Toss well and let the salad sit for a few minutes so the seasonings can marry and the salt can draw out a bit of the carrot juices.

Toss again, taste, and dial in the flavors so they are really lively by adding more of any of them. Pour in 1/4 cup olive oil and toss. Taste again, then distribute on your plates or a platter.

Pull the burrata or mozzarella into shreds or little blobs and distribute over the salad. Drizzle on a bit more oil to finish and serve.