Honey roasted carrots

I've professed my love for roasted vegetables many times on this blog, so no need to go there again. That being said, I make these honey roasted carrots all the time - they're definitely one of my most-repeated recipes. Start by preheating your oven to 425 degrees and peeling some carrots - I usually use about a pound. Make sure all the carrots are roughly the same size. After the carrots are peeled, cut off the ends. Cut each carrot into 3 inch sticks - I usually cut the thicker pieces into quarters, and the thinner pieces in half. Put the carrots onto a greased baking sheet and drizzle with equal parts of olive oil and honey, about a tablespoon of each. Season the carrots with salt and pepper and toss everything together. Spread the carrots in a single layer and put the pan in the oven.

Roast the carrots for 20 minutes, then stir. Put the carrots back into the oven for another 15 minutes, or until the carrots are browned and tender. Transfer the carrots to a serving dish and season with coarse salt (I used Maldon).

I love these carrots - the honey enhances the natural sweetness of the carrots and helps with caramelization. Don't skip the finishing salt, it creates a nice textural contrast.

Another day, another braise

I've been doing a lot of braising this cold weather season, everything from radishes to pork shoulder. This time around, I made braised beef with carrots from Patricia Wells' Vegetable Harvest cookbook. The recipe is unique because it's as much about the carrots as it is the beef. Many braising recipes use vegetables only to enhance the flavor of the meat - by the end of the cooking period, the vegetables are usually mushy and get strained out of the sauce. This recipe produced a tender piece of meat with an abundance of perfectly cooked carrots. The carrots held their shape, and even had a slight bite to them.

I always get fun cookbooks for the holidays, and this year was no exception. I got the Campanile cookbook, which is great because I'm a huge Nancy Silverton fan. I made kale with crispy garlic from the book to go along with the beef. The recipe is actually really simple - thinly sliced garlic cloves are crisped up in oil, and added to cooked kale seasoned with a squeeze of lemon and salt. I used lacinato kale, which is also known as dinosaur kale or cavalo nero. I prefer the flavor and texture, but regular kale would work just as well.
Braised beef with carrots

Adapted from Vegetable Harvest

Serves about 6

A 3lb boneless piece of beef meant for braising (anything labeled chuck is a good bet)

3 lbs of carrots, peeled and thinly sliced on the diagonal

2 cans of tomato paste

2 cups of red wine

2 cups of chicken or beef stock

4 sprigs of fresh thyme

2 bay leaves

2 tablespoons of olive oil

salt and pepper

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large heavy pot. Season the beef generously with salt and pepper and brown on all sides. Add all of the remaining ingredients to the pot, bring to a simmer. Cover the pot and cook at a low simmer for about 3 and a half hours, or until the meat is tender. Turn the meat once per hour. After the meat is cooked, remove it from the pot and cut into thick slices. Spoon the carrots over the top. Discard thyme sprigs and bay leaves. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Sunday night chicken dinner

As I've mentioned before, on weeknights I don't have a lot of time and energy for cooking, so I do a lot of prep work on the weekends and try to choose weekday meals that aren't too difficult. I tend to cook more complicated and time consuming dishes on Sundays. Today it was a brined roast chicken from the Bouchon cookbook, with a couple of vegetable sides.

I don't use my Bouchon cookbook much, so I decided it was time to put it to use. The roasted chicken recipe is something that you definitely need to plan out ahead of time. The brine is flavored with garlic, rosemary, parsley, peppercorns, bay leaves, honey, lemon and thyme, and is best made a day in advance. The chicken needs to brine for 6 hours prior to cooking. The chicken roasts at 475 degrees, which gives the skin a beautiful mahogany sheen. The nice thing about brining is that it provides extra insurance that you'll end up with a moist bird even if you overcook it a little. In my case, it came out perfectly cooked.


Was it worth the extra effort to brine the chicken? I think so, I'll be doing it again in the future.

I chose two new vegetable recipes to accompany the chicken. First up is sherry vinegar and molasses glazed carrots, from the latest issue of Bon Appetit. If I was making this for a special occasion I would pay the extra money for baby carrots; this was a casual dinner so I went with larger carrots cut into sticks. The carrots are simmered in a mixture of butter, sherry vinegar, molasses and water, and then glazed with more molasses and vinegar and finished with salt, pepper and parsley. The molasses and vinegar added a nice complexity to what would otherwise be a pretty standard glazed carrot recipe. I also added a little fleur de sel at the end for some crunch.

Next up was spinach with garlic confit from the Bouchon cookbook. Garlic confit is made by slowly simmering whole cloves of garlic in canola oil. The dish combines butter, minced shallots, fresh spinach, garlic confit, salt and pepper. It's actually quite simple and quick if you make the garlic confit in advance.

Overall, the meal was a great success. I love it when I try new recipes and everything comes out the way it's supposed to.

On an unrelated note, my friend Mary Rose sent me this great link to Cooks Illustrated's grocery shopping guide. I love that Cooks Illustrated tests out all these ingredients, I don't love that I can't find a lot of the top rated brands in California!

Carrot cupcakes

My husband happens to love carrot cake. Me? Not so much, although I do love cream cheese frosting. I had some leftover cream cheese frosting from when I made Ina's coconut cupcakes, so I decided to make some carrot cupcakes. I used this recipe from the Everyday Food cookbook. These cupcakes were really simple to put together. They didn't rise much, but a generous swirl of frosting made them not look so flat. Even I liked these cupcakes - the cake is very moist and light, which just a little bit of walnuts and coconut in the batter. Sometimes carrot cakes can be very dense from all the add-ins. The toasted coconut on top adds a little bit of sweetness and crunch. All in all, a nice treat to make when you want something simple and don't want to go to the grocery store to purchase a bunch of ingredients.

Spanish tapas

My parents just celebrated their 33rd wedding anniversary. In honor of their anniversary and their upcoming trip to Spain, I made them a meal of tapas. All of the recipes came from The New Spanish Table cookbook, and everything was delicious!

Tangerine olives

Marinated carrots

Goat cheese stuffed piquillo peppers

Moorish chicken kabobs

Confetti shrimp

Rice pudding ice cream with coffee caramel sauce

Orange glazed carrots

These carrots are really delicious. I was trying to use up the odds and ends in my vegetable drawer so that I can restock tomorrow. I saw a recipe for glazed carrots in Barefoot Contessa at Home, and adapted the recipe to my taste. Here's what I came up with.

Orange glazed carrots
Serves 2

3 cups of carrot slices cut on the diagonal, about 1/2 inch thick
2 teaspoons unsalted butter
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 cup water
pinch of kosher salt or grey sea salt
1/2 teaspoon grated orange zest
juice from 1/2 of an orange
pinch of fleur de sel for finishing

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Add the water, honey and pinch of kosher/grey salt. Bring to a boil. Add the carrots, cover and simmer over medium heat for 5 minutes. Remove the lid and cook the carrots until most of the liquid has evaporated. Add the orange zest and orange juice, cook over medium heat until carrots are tender and juice has formed a glaze. Remove from heat, finish with fleur de sel.

French carrots with sherry butter

As usual, I was looking for something interesting in the produce section when I came across what the grocery store calls french carrots.

These carrots are about 3 inches long, and very thick. Peeling them takes a little bit of effort because of their size and shape. I wanted them to cook quickly, so I cut the peeled carrots into quarters. I sauteed the carrots in a little olive oil until they started to brown. I added a few tablespoons of chicken stock, and cooked the carrots until they had absorbed all the stock and were tender. I added a splash of sherry vinegar to the pan, a tablespoon of butter, and topped it all off with fleur de sel and some chopped parsley. These carrots were sweeter than your average supermarket carrot.

Everyday Food - carrot and ginger soup

This soup is from the latest issue of Everyday Food magazine. Carrots, sweet potatoes, onions and fresh ginger are cooked and pureed with chicken broth to make a smooth and creamy soup.

I found the recipe to be a little bland as written, so I added another tablespoon of lemon juice and a pinch of cumin powder. That helped quite a bit with the flavor.

Baby carrots with dill butter

I bought these pink and white baby carrots:

I peeled the carrots and cut them in half lengthwise. I heated up a pan with about 2 teaspoons of olive oil. When the pan was extremely hot, I threw in the carrots to sear them. I added a little salt and pepper and sauteed them until they were cooked through, which only took a few minutes. I tossed the carrots in a teaspoon of butter and chopped fresh dill and sprinkled fleur de sel over the top before serving.