Market Stall Staple · Spicy Carrot Salad
Morkovcha
Photo: Off-shell / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
It's sold as 'Korean carrots' across the former Soviet Union, yet it's unknown in Korea — Koryo-saram cooks adapted kimchi seasoning to carrots when napa cabbage was hard to find.
Morkovcha is julienned carrot tossed with garlic, ground coriander, chili, vinegar, and hot oil, left to marinate until it turns soft and deeply seasoned. Market stalls across Russia's Far East sell it by the scoop from open tubs, alongside pickles and other prepared salads.
Why it's made this way: The dish comes from the Koryo-saram, ethnic Koreans who lived in the Russian Far East before Stalin's forced 1937 deportation to Central Asia; it spread back across the USSR, and today it's sold everywhere from Vladivostok to Moscow markets.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3443 dishes from 118 countries.
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