Carrots are brilliant – full of vitamins and extremely good for you. In the last year or
so we’ve been lucky enough to have seen lots of different varieties of carrots available
in the shops – long, round, peculiar-shaped, and even some purple ones. My favourite ways
of cooking carrots all serve 4 people – for each recipe you will need 500g/1lb 2oz of
carrots, either left whole if they are baby ones, or sliced into small erratic pieces –
nothing too perfect.
Carrots boiled with orange, garlic and herbs
Boil the carrots in salted boiling water with a tablespoon of sugar, a knob of butter and
a little handful of fragrant herbs, tied up. Parsley, rosemary, thyme, bay – use just one
or a mixture. Cut an orange into eighths and add them to the water, along with a few
whole garlic cloves in their skins. If you really want to be a little tiger, add a pinch
of cumin as well (seeds or ground) – it subtly cuts through with the most wonderful
flavour. As soon as the carrots are cooked, drain them, discard the herbs and all but one
of the orange pieces, squeeze the garlic out of its skin, chop the remaining orange piece
finely and toss with the carrots, some seasoning and a little more butter. The flavour
will be incredible.
Another idea is to fry the chopped-up orange in a good tablespoon of sugar, so it almost
jammifies, and serve this on top of the carrots. These two flavours together are one of
the coolest things.
Roasted carrots with orange, garlic and thyme
Or – just as easy – as soon as you drain the carrots you can throw them into a baking
tray with the chopped-up orange and the garlic cloves and roast them at 200°C/400°F/gas 6
for 10 minutes – this will give you a slightly meatier flavour.