A sack of carrots
To save money and enhance health we are often advised to eat seasonally and these past few weeks we have followed this to the extreme, our diet consisting of huge amounts of onions, swede, parsnip, carrots, leeks, cabbage and kale. It's certainly true that such vegetables are a better price (although the price of kale has crept up somewhat with its new celebrity endorsements). Combined with lentils or other pulses and some of the cheaper cuts of meat (again, these days not always such a bargain) we have managed to make some hearty and wholesome dishes for these winter nights. As you will already know, I am working my way through several bags of homegrown vegetables and this weekend I have been concentrating on carrots. Today was forecast to be sunny but cold and I had planned to spend several guilty hours battling the weeds down at the allotment but it clouded over mid morning and the kitchen proved too cosy an escape (although I used the time well preparing for the coming week, using up the final leeks and a rather muddy celeriac to make a celeriac soup with a parsley and walnut pesto for Monday evening's dinner and Tuesday's packed lunch, amongst all my carrot themed endeavours).
As M has been valiantly hauling the last of the building rubble into the back of our tiny car to take to the tip, I thought I'd make a bit of treat for lunch, so the first dish of the day was these spicy carrot and chick pea 'burgers' using Jack Monroe's recipe for chorizo and chick pea burgers as inspiration. I used up a small amount of leftover chorizo from our trip to Spain and upped the carrot and chilli content considerably, making six large patties (two of which are now in the freezer). Stuffed in a seeded pitta bread with watercress and olive oil mayonnaise these make a rather lip tingling and satisfying lunch.
More investigative work on the internet for other imaginative uses of winter carrots led me to this recipe for a rather healthy sounding flapjack. To be honest, it was the use of black treacle which hooked me, as I love the dark, metallic, mysterious syrup in its iconic tin. It's the sort of thing that you dip you spoon in repeatedly to see if you can understand its complex flavour, I love the stuff!
In my usual manner, I changed the recipe somewhat, changing the combination of seeds and oats to include flax, hemp and sesame seeds as well as pumpkin and sunflower. The resulting flapjacks are rather soft and sticky but went down very well and definitely form a useful 'power bar' for my resident cyclist. I also have in mind a carrot jam (another war time recipe and one which I have tasted in a Norfolk B&B) and an attempt to create a carrot cake inspired cookie but these are for another day. My final carrot busting recipe is tomorrow's packed lunch, a French carrot salad, using David Lebovitz's method. I still have another bag to go but they are lasting well in cold storage. Hopefully, my eyesight will be improving with all this beta carotene intake!
As M has been valiantly hauling the last of the building rubble into the back of our tiny car to take to the tip, I thought I'd make a bit of treat for lunch, so the first dish of the day was these spicy carrot and chick pea 'burgers' using Jack Monroe's recipe for chorizo and chick pea burgers as inspiration. I used up a small amount of leftover chorizo from our trip to Spain and upped the carrot and chilli content considerably, making six large patties (two of which are now in the freezer). Stuffed in a seeded pitta bread with watercress and olive oil mayonnaise these make a rather lip tingling and satisfying lunch.
More investigative work on the internet for other imaginative uses of winter carrots led me to this recipe for a rather healthy sounding flapjack. To be honest, it was the use of black treacle which hooked me, as I love the dark, metallic, mysterious syrup in its iconic tin. It's the sort of thing that you dip you spoon in repeatedly to see if you can understand its complex flavour, I love the stuff!
In my usual manner, I changed the recipe somewhat, changing the combination of seeds and oats to include flax, hemp and sesame seeds as well as pumpkin and sunflower. The resulting flapjacks are rather soft and sticky but went down very well and definitely form a useful 'power bar' for my resident cyclist. I also have in mind a carrot jam (another war time recipe and one which I have tasted in a Norfolk B&B) and an attempt to create a carrot cake inspired cookie but these are for another day. My final carrot busting recipe is tomorrow's packed lunch, a French carrot salad, using David Lebovitz's method. I still have another bag to go but they are lasting well in cold storage. Hopefully, my eyesight will be improving with all this beta carotene intake!
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