For as colorful, sweet, and lively as they are, carrots tend to be a surprisingly uncelebrated workhorse in the kitchen -- just patiently hanging around the crisper drawer, rarely getting the attention they deserve. No longer! Shave, shred, roast, puree and glaze away or (best of all) surprise us!
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Six of the nine ingredients: onion, olive oil, ginger, thyme, carrots, and garlic. (Missing from the photo: vegetable stock, salt and pepper.)
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We cut our carrots into 1-inch rounds. If your carrots are fat like ours, you may want to slice them into 1/2-inch pieces to ensure they're nearly cooked through by the time the broiler works its magic.
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Amanda neatly arranges carrots on a baking sheet.
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They get tossed with a little olive oil and some salt.
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And then under the broiler!
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Smashin' garlic.
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We put the thyme and the ginger into the stock to infuse.
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After about 5 minutes under the broiler, our carrots looked like this. We flipped them and put them back in the oven.
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After about 15 minutes in the oven, our carrots looked like toasted orange marshmallows. We scraped off any spots that seemed especially charred but left most of the browning.
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Amanda browns the onions to start the base of the soup.
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Once they were soft and caramelized, she added the garlic.
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And we tipped in the roasted carrots.
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In goes the infused veggie stock -- sans ginger and thyme sprig.
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After a 5 minute simmer, we tried to blend the soup, but our fat carrot chunks proved too much for this immersion blender.
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So, we resorted to the trusty Waring.
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Much better!
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Time to taste!
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See how happy we are during this second batch of blending, fortified with spoonfuls of delicious soup?
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If your soup is too thick, just add some water or more broth and reheat gently before serving.
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To make the dish, you'll need: carrots (with their tops on), white wine vinegar, butter, Bibb lettuce, sugar, thyme and bay leaf.
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Since we weren't peeling the carrots, we needed to give them a good scrub.
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At thirschfeld's direction, we trimmed the carrot tops to about an inch long.
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We used a pan large enough to fit nearly all the carrots in one layer -- if you have a pan that's even a little wider, all the better.
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We scattered butter, thyme, bay leaf, sugar and vinegar over the top of the carrots.
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Then, a dash of salt and white pepper.
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Thirschfeld calls for enough water to come nearly all the way up the carrots, but because we had a few stacked on top of one another, we added just a cup and a half to start.
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The carrots simmered on the stove for about 20 minutes, until just tender. You can cook them less or more, depending on how you like your carrots.
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With the carrots tender, and the liquid nearly reduced to a glaze, Amanda added the lettuce leaves to the pan to wilt briefly.
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In seconds, they looked like leaves of light green spinach.
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We put the veggies on a platter and drizzled the rest of the glaze over them.
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