Carrot Soup with Ginger & Caraway

This week my cooking was inspired by a Food&Wine 'what to cook next' article. What caught my eye was a recipe for pressure cooker pork carnitas which promised tender pork shoulder in 35 minutes. I happened to have had just such a shoulder roast in my freezer.

On Tuesday I shared the carnitas dinner with my dad and family. Everyone was impressed with the tenderness of the pork in such little time. Magical Pressure Cooker indeed!

Later in the week I re-read the Food&Wine article concentrating more on the subject of the article: Nathan Myhrvold the author of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. And then my eye caught the carmelized carrot soup recipe.

Last weekend at the Mar Vista Farmer's Market we bought a bounty of produce that really needed to be used and soon! My refrigerator was bursting with:
• Tiny White Potatoes
• Huge Parsnips
• Heirloom Carrots
• Hearty Asparagus Spears
• Blood Oranges
But I wanted to use up the wilting fennel bulb and lonely single leek both lurking at the bottom of my produce drawer. They were begging for soup. Using the article as a guideline I created my own recipe:

Pressure Cooker
Carrot Soup with Ginger & Carraway
Six First Course Servings
Ingredients:
5 Tablespoons Butter
1 lb. Heirloom variety carrots*
1 small fennel bulb
1 leek
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda** optional
2 Cups Carrot Juice
2 Tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1 Tablespoon caraway seeds
Method:
Peel the carrots and cut into ¾” slices. Trim the fennel bulb removing any wilted edges and removing the tough core. Slice into ¾” pieces. Use only the white and light green of the leek. Slice lengthwise and then into ¾” slices. Put the carrots, fennel & leek into the pressure cooker.
Add the butter cut into chunks. Cook uncovered until the butter melts. Mix well. Add the salt & baking soda if using. Cover and bring to 15 psi using your pressure cooker’s manufacturer’s instructions. Cook for 10 minutes at 15 psi. Cool quickly in your sink using cool water.

Return the uncovered pressure cooker to the stove. Add the carrot juice, ginger & caraway seeds. Stir well to combine. Bring to a simmer. Cook for an additional 5 minutes on low heat. Taste for salt.
Puree and strain the soup using either a blender or submersion blender & then a food mill or cheesecloth & metal strainer.
Serve hot.

*Heirloom Carrots I used a variety of carrots using up what I had as well as adding a few heirlooms for color. Note that some heirloom carrots have a VERY fibrous core. The red variety with a bright yellow core was so fibrous my Wustof chef’s knife would not go through it. These red carrots were the true reason the soup needed to be strained! Without straining, it was inedible, chewy soup.

**Baking Soda The original recipe was for “Caramelized Carrot Soup” and the baking soda is added to speed up the caramelization. I didn’t get any caramelization in my soup, but perhaps the baking soda helps break down the vegetables quicker, so I listed it here, add if you wish.

Farmer's Market Veggie Feast

It's what''s for dinner:

Heirloom Carrot Soup with Ginger & Caraway

Roasted Parsnips & Potatoes in Garlic Thyme Butter

Roasted Asparagus in Blood Orange Brown Butter Sauce

The Vegetables - Xmas 2008

Along with the cranberry sauce and chutney, the Hoopers requested vegetables. They love my vegetables. I love cooking vegetables. And the Hoopers are always kind in accepting whichever recipes I choose to explore each year.

I brought three vegetable dishes this year. My first choice was a cauliflower dish I discovered a few months ago. For the record, I am not a big cauliflower fan. I find it boring, tasteless, a pale sister to broccoli. But this recipe turned the bland into beautiful. The cauliflower head is sliced into thick slices, roasted in the oven and tossed with a lemon mustard butter sauce that is out of this world. The carmelization from the roasting combines beautifully with the sauce and this dish is a big hit in my book.

I love broccoli and enjoy finding new ways to prepare it that don't include butter, cream or cheese (because that is cheating, anything will taste great with enough butter, cream or cheese!). I found this recipe at Epicurious. It's a Mario Batali recipe and I wasn't sure it would be too exciting, but it is! The wine infuses the broccoli spears with a tangy goodness that is absolutely addicting.

I had to please the children at the party as well, so carrots were in order. (Can anyone tell my why children love orange and white food so much? My 10 year old spent at least 2 years of his life eating only only foods that were orange and white. Strange.) I cheated and used a bag of organic baby carrots and the texture of the final product always suffers when I do this. But hey, I was busy, it was Christmas Eve! I often do a orange glazed carrot recipe using marmalade and butter, sometimes garlic and ginger too. I kept it simple this year and just used the marmalade and a knob of butter in a large frying pan with a little bit of water. I simmered them slowly until they were tender voila. No recipe, just winged it.

Here are the recipes for the other two:

Cauliflower with Mustard Lemon Butter

Ingredients:
1 large head of Cauliflower
2 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest finely grated
6 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon fresh parsley chopped
2 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400F. Lightly butter a rimmed baking sheet. Cut cauliflower in half, then cut crosswise into 1/3-inch-thick slices. Arrange slices in single layer on prepared baking sheet; sprinkle with salt. Roast until cauliflower is slightly softened, about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, melt butter in small saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in lemon juice, mustard, and lemon peel. Spoon mustard-lemon butter evenly over cauliflower and roast until crisp-tender, about 10 minutes longer.
Can be made 2 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature.
Sprinkle with parsley and serve warm or at room temperature.

Broccoli with White Wine and Garlic

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
3 pounds broccoli, cut into spears
1 cup Frascati or other dry white wine
1 tablespoon hot red pepper flakes
Grated zest of 1 lemon
Grated zest of 1 orange

Method:

In a large sauté pan, heat the olive oil with the garlic over medium-high heat until just sizzling. Add the broccoli and cook, tossing frequently and gradually adding the wine to keep the garlic from browning until the stalks are tender 8 to 10 minutes. Add the red pepper flakes and zests, and tossing well, taste and season with salt, serve immediately.

Have you eaten a crosne?

Yes, its sounds like a mean old witch, but in fact it is a very small root vegetable, less than 2" long, shaped like a screw or a bumpy grub worm, white, plump and shiny.

I read about crosnes last fall. Several newspapers carried food articles hailing these little tubers as the latest gourmet ingredient. Almost immediately I saw them on several menus. The first time was at Melisse. A week or so later we found ourselves at Providence and once again crosnes were scattered around a plate or two. And in NY for my birthday trip, we found crosnes on the menu at Per Se.

At Melisse they were offered as a starter, just sautee'd with some herbs and butter.

At Providence and Per Se we found them scattered on the plate with a meat course. They do a good job soaking up flavorful sauces.

But what are they? Where do they grow? How do they taste? Well, they taste about as bland as they look. There is a slight earthiness to them but to my taste, the flavor is so minor as to be non existent.

The GourmetSleuth offers a few good images and some information, but for the truly curious I recommend this Mother Earth News article titled Crunch a Bunch of Crosnes. Apparently the plant is a relative of mint. They can be grown quite easily. The Crunch a Bunch article has recipes, sources for buying, sources for growing and much more than even I care to know about the crosne.

Pickling is mentioned at both sites. I have not tried them pickled and now I'm even more intriqued.

Strange little things. Has anyone else experienced the crosne vegetable? What are your thoughts on the grub of the vegetable world?