Skip to main content

Baby Carrots and Potatoes





I am not quite sure if I will have a nut roast or vegetarian polpettone for Xmas this year, but I thought of having a try with the veggies... and then I could not resist buying these baby carrots! I didn't plant carrots (yet), the carrot bed needs some serious stirring of soil, the clay is all compacted down in my garden, and crooked carrots are so hard to clean! Maybe I will plant some in the weeks to come, for now I enjoyed these :-)



It takes a while to clean the baby carrots, but then they look so cute! I put them in a pan with butter (you can use margarine) fresh sage and a pinch of salt. Just a little stir, while the butter is frying, and then turn the heat off and cover with a heavy lid: the carrots will cook in their own steam, and stay bright orange and lightly crispy.



I washed and boiled the potatoes in salted water until I was able to cut them with a knife (so, not too mushy).
Then I cut them in two or three pieces, placed them in a roasting pan lined with baking paper, added olive oil, garlic, ground cumin seeds, smoked paprika and salt. Straight into the oven for about one hour.



The potatoes were lightly spicy, and the carrot sweet and aromatic, very nice, even without roast :-)


Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©



Labels:

Comments

  1. Priya SureshDecember 22, 2010 at 10:03 PM

    So cute baby carrots, roasted veggies are truly inviting..

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownDecember 23, 2010 at 12:28 AM

    I love rosted veggie!
    I wish you a merry chrstmas!
    hugs and kisses
    Barbaraxx

    ReplyDelete
  3. VictorDecember 23, 2010 at 4:11 AM

    I love roasted potatoes. I make mine with rosemary and garlic. Merry Christmas!

    ReplyDelete
  4. RoseDecember 23, 2010 at 8:14 AM

    These are so beautiful. I love the simplicity of the presentation...the carrots are charming.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AlessandraDecember 23, 2010 at 12:48 PM

    Thank you all for your comments,

    @ Victor, I usually do them too with garlic and rosemary, real Italian style, but now I am using smoked paprika more and more!!!


    @ Vincent, thank you but, no thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sharon RuddDecember 23, 2010 at 1:27 PM

    How lovely. Amazing how delicious a simple and straightforward dish like this can be. Merry Christmas!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to make Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum), and Sweet New Zealand

Rose Turkish Delights (Lokum) Before I start I would like to say that I don't have a sugar thermometer, essential if you are really into confectionery, and that I didn't use much sugar for these Turkish delights. Many recipes use much more sugar, and it is not that I wanted to make a low sugar treat here (it is still pretty sweet), it is just that making it at home really makes me realize how much sugar there is already in my diet, and if I can have something with a little less... well, why not! This method is 'home friendly' i.e. these can be made at home with very little effort and equipment, and the recipe comes from my book  Sweet As...  where I also have the recipe for lavender and orange blossom Turkish Delights. Ingredients 1 l water 300 g sugar 2 tbsp lemon juice 100 g cornflour 1 tbsp frozen raspberries 1 tbsp rose water icing sugar (very little) and cornflour (lots) to dust. In a pot put hal...
9 comments
Read more

Silver beet Paneer, a variation of Palak Paneer

The other day I showed you my curry made with borage , ‘invented’ because I have tons of it in the garden! The other green-leaf crop that does well in Auckland is silver beet. My old plants (from last year!) got so tall that I started collecting only the little leaves from the stalks, and they look like spinach. One of my favourite Indian dishes is Palak Paneer (or Panir), spinach with panir cottage cheese, and this variation is made using my silver beet. I washed (many times!) the small silver beet leaves, and then I steamed them and drain them. In a heavy pot I heated 2 tbsp of vegetable oil (I used rice bran oil) and sautéed for 30 seconds: 1/2 tsp ground cumin 1/2 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp turmeric 1/3 tsp ground chili then I added 2 roughly chopped shallots and, after 3 minutes, a good pinch of salt and the cooked silver beet. I cooked everything on low for about 20 minutes (you may need to add just a little water if the silver beet is too dry) and then finely pureed the content ...
5 comments
Read more

Home Made Marzipan Sweets

This is another recipe from my book Sweet As , and something that I love to make for Xmas. I would like to say that for marzipan you should get the best almonds around, natural, but here in New Zealand the almonds taste different from the ones in Italy. They are imported, not sure where from most of the time, but they are not top grade almonds. Still, with a few tips, you can make your marzipan taste great even with 'regular' almonds! Buy them natural, not blanched, you need to blanche then yourself or the result will be too dry. To blanch them you need to put them in boiling water for a couple of minutes, and then add cold water and take the skin off, one by one. For this recipe you will need: 200 g almonds 100 g icing sugar 5 apricot kernels. As I was saying before, the almond here have little taste, so I like to collect the stones from apricot and get the almonds out. They are a real pain to crack! In the photo above you can see apricot stones and kernels. The apricot kernel...
13 comments
Read more