Saucy Dressings’ sweet and saucy carrots

“Orange ? Carrot? How is it that the orange tastes of carrot, and the carrot of orange?”

Paul Reboux, Le Nouveau Savoir-manger

This is a fabulous melange of suggestions from chefs and writers as wide-ranging as Elizabeth David, Paul Reboux, and Thomas Keller no less, and honed and developed over decades. This is now the Chief Taster’s favourite way with carrots.

The idea for the marsala comes from Elizabeth David… if you don’t have any you could substitute with red vermouth. Chef Chris Honor substitutes the maple syrup for grape molasses and coriander for the parsley; then he adds coriander seeds, ginger, golden linseeds and spring onions.

The pairing of orange and carrot is well-known, but Paul Reboux, writing in the 1930s, was one of the first to write about it.

The idea of cleaning the carrots with the green scrubbie, and finishing with the textured salt comes from Thomas Keller. This way you not only save time, but you also save the skin which contains a lot of flavour and nutrients. Plus, as Keller puts it so delightfully, it’s a soft and velvety process.

The liquid, whether orange juice, just water, or water and marsala, is important because as it evaporates it helps to develop the carrots’ own sweetness. Both the orange juice and the marsala contain acid which further encourages the development of flavour. If you just coated them in a syrup of butter and sugar, they would be too cloying.

In terms of sugar, you can simply use sugar…or jaggery…or maple syrup…or I often use membrillo (quince cheese).

You can make these carrots, slightly undercooked, the day before, and then reheat, with a little extra liquid if necessary.

Avoid ‘horse’ carrots (huge ones like the ones in the image above – not always easy to avoid), which Keller uses for stocks, if you can. Instead use thinner, bunched carrots which are sweeter. You can make carrot pesto with the leaves.

Saucy Dressings’ sweet and saucy carrots

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Serves – 4

Ingredients

• 900g/2 lbs of carrots
• 100g/4 oz butter
• 2 tbsps soft, dark brown sugar; or maple syrup, or some membrillo (quince cheese)
• Enough orange juice (ideally blood orange juice), or water, to just cover the carrots; or you can use a small wine glass/80 ml/⅓ cup marsala and water. The total liquid you need is likely to be about 240g/1 cup
• Urfa pepper flakes
• A few stems of parsley
• Textured salt, Maldon is good

Instructions

1. Begin by starting to melt the butter in a smallish frying pan. You need to be able to accommodate the carrots all on one level, leaving a bit of room for them to move and turn.
2. While it’s melting, clean the carrots with a green scrubbie – a lovely tip, given by Thomas Keller in his Masterclass. Then cut them into similar size pieces – I like lengths. When they are all cut add them to the butter.
3. If you are using marsala, add that now, and cook down for four or five minutes. Otherwise, stir to coat the carrots with the butter, and add enough orange juice to just cover the carrots.
4. Add the brown sugar or the maple syrup; and a pinch of Urfa pepper flakes.
5. If you are using marsala, after four or five minutes of cooking add enough water to not quite cover the carrots.
6. After about ten minutes of cooking the carrots should be done and the liquid reduced to just a glaze. But this time frame is just a guideline – it depends on the size of the carrots. The carrot should have just become soft, certainly it should not be mushy.
7. Snip over the parsley, and sprinkle over the textured salt.