Charlie has been away this week which gives me free reign to go vegetarian for the week. He loves vegetables, but is a bit of a meatasaurus so gets a bit edgy if there isn't some animal protein on the plate come dinner time. 

It's also been a lovely warm week, with a few muggy days, so honestly a menu of light, bright, vegetarian friendly salads, dips, and snacks is totally up my street. 

I first had this dressing in a Korean BBQ restaurant, whilst everyone was ordering up delicious looking sticky ribs and spicy Katsu curry, I was having a pious moment and chose the avocado salad. 

I assumed I'd get some avocado and some lettuce, but when the bright orange, thick dressing arrived I was completely at sea... it was, however:

one of the best things I have ever tasted. I shit you not.

I've loaded this up on top of all kinds of salad, and it's great but it's never at its peak as when it's dolloped over fresh avocado.

Unlike so many European and American salad dressings, it's not oil based or packed with creamy elements like cheese, butter milk or egg yolk, so there's no need to ask for this bad boy on the side.

It's texture is chunky, almost like a dip, but the colour and flavour are sharp, sweet, and sour which are A.MAY.ZING over creamy avocado.

If you hadn't already picked up on this suggestion: eat it with avocado.

Avocado.

Ingredients:

4oz carrots

2 cloves garlic

1 oz piece of fresh ginger

5 tablespoons rice wine vinegar

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon honey

pepper

Method:

Peel the carrots and chop roughly so that they will fit into a blender or food processor.

Peel the garlic cloves and the ginger. Peeling ginger can be a bit tricky because of its knobbly surface, I tend to specifically choose fresh ginger for it's smoother, fatter qualities when I'm buying it for this very reason.

There is a little trick to peeling ginger with a spoon, but really it's as easy to do with a vegetable peeler after cutting off any particularly large knobbles.

Chop the ginger in to similar sized pieces to the garlic cloves and tumble everything, including the liquid ingredients into the blender and whizz until smooth.

Smooth is a relative terms- see the picture above for textural reference. You want everything to be well combined, so you don't get any large chunks of raw garlic or ginger all up in your avocado.

To serve, slice up your avocado... or any other salad that you think might taste better than avocado (you'd be wrong) and lay it out on a plate. For a bit more body, tear up some iceberg lettuce, the crunchy, water heavy leaves are also really good with the sharpness of the dressing.

Spoon the dressing generously onto your salad. Keep in the fridge for up to a week, but be sure to mix is before each serving as it will separate out a little as it sits.