Pan-Roasted Carrots

Intrigued by the title, I was browsing through Think Like a Chef byTom Colicchio the other day and came across his recipe for pan-roasted carrots. The sheer simplicity of this dish inspired me to do my own version.

Chef Colicchio calls for 16 peeled and trimmed carrots, salt and pepper, 4 sprigs of rosemary, 1 tablespoon of butter, and 4 teaspoons of honey. Sounds delicious, but I want a little less sweetness, so I use balsamic vinegar, and less of it. I also object to peeling the carrots, because I don’t want to lose all the flavor and nutrients in the peel. I also skipped the pepper, but freshly ground white pepper would be a nice addition.

Start with nice carrots, by which I mean carrots that are of about the same size, are straight, and hopefully are fresh from a garden. Wash them, and optionally peel them. Make sure to dry the carrots to avoid splattering.

Preheat a large fry or sauté pan over medium heat with a generous amount of extra virgin olive oil. When the pan is ready, add the carrots. Every so often over the next twenty minutes or so, turn the carrots so that the whole carrot is roasted.

When the carrots look like they’re done, add a spear or two of fresh rosemary. Continue cooking and turning the carrots for another five minutes or so. Then add a tablespoon of butter and drizzle them with balsamic vinegar.

As the butter melts, turn the carrots to coat all the way around with butter and balsamic. Much of the butter will remain in the pan, and the rosemary is really only there to perfume the carrots. The balsamic darkens the caramelization and adds its own sweetness. Remove the carrots from the pan to a serving dish and sprinkle liberally with Fleur de Sel.

These things are so good I eat them as a snack!

Tuscan Steak

Is it really Tuscan? No, but it has flavors I think of when I think of Tuscany: lemon, rosemary, olive oil.

This is a simple preparation. Rub olive oil into the steak, then sprinkle on some freshly ground pepper (I used a blend of tellicherry black, malabar white, and pink peppercorns), sea salt, rosemary (fresh from the garden, of course), and lemon zest. Be sure to season both sides. Let rest for 30 minutes or so, then grill.

After the steak has grilled to your desired degree of doneness, let it rest for five minutes or so. I used that time to step out to the garden, select a couple of tomatoes, rinse them off, and slice them. I finished the steak by drizzling some Villa Manodori balsamic vinegar on it.

The tomatoes were dressed with a bit of Villa Manodori extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and then dusted with a hint of Fleur de Sel. I added a bit of Black Jack Cheese from Scott “Dominic” Catino to round out an excellent meal.

Bacon

Mmm, bacon. I need some bacon for the BLT From Scratch Challenge, and I’ve never cured meat before, so it’s time to do a test.

For this first bacon I used the recipe and method in Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It. There are excellent recipes in Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie and The Paley’s Place Cookbook by Vitaly Paley. I’ll try both eventually.

For this recipe you’ll need to get some curing salt, sometimes called “pink salt,” Prague powder, or Insta-Cure #1. Don’t confuse this pink salt with actual pink salt from Australia or the Himalayan Plateau. Curing salt includes salt, sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite, and other ingredients, and is commonly dyed pink to make it visually different from regular salt.

Bacon Cure

½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses
2 tablespoons kosher or sea salt
1 teaspoon curing salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Rinse, trim, and dry one hunk of pork belly of about 2½-3 pounds so that it’s rectangular. Then mix the cure ingredients together and rub it into the pork belly on both sides and along the edges.

Put the belly into a plastic bag if you have one big enough, or into a glass dish that will hold it and cover with plastic wrap. Put into the refrigerator to cure.

Every day for the next week, massage the juices that have accumulated back into the meat and turn it over. If it still feels squishy anywhere after a week, continue to cure for another day or two. Then you’re ready to smoke or roast the bacon.

For this first batch I roasted the bacon in a 200°F oven for about 2 hours until the interior temperature reached 150°F. Then I brushed genuine liquid hickory smoke on both sides and let it cool.

This was my first home-cured bacon and I will never buy bacon again. It’s just plain silly to buy that which can be made so easily and so very much better than store-bought.

Home Creamery: Mascarpone

Mascarpone, the queen of dessert cheeses. At least it is when it’s freshly made. The mascarpone available in most stores is a little rubbery and a bit too citrusy. The real thing has a texture like whipped cream about to turn to butter and an ethereal, ever-so-slightly tart flavor.

To make mascarpone you’ll need tartaric acid. In spite of what you might have read, cream of tartar is not tartaric acid; rather, it’s a derivative of tartaric acid. You cannot subsitute one for the other with any hope of success. In the picture to the right, the powdery cream of tartar is on the left, and the crystaline tartaric acid is on the right.

You’ll also need a double boiler setup of some sort, or you could just use two pans like I did. A thermometer is mandatory. You’ll need to line a stainless steel colander with a double layer of butter muslin to finish the cheese. Set the colander into a bowl to catch the whey.

Heat one quart/liter of half-and-half or cream to 185°F/85°C. Then add ¼ teaspoon/1.25mL tartaric acid and stir until the dairy thickens. It should be thick enough to be reminiscent of cream of wheat or farina, and the spoon or whisk you’re stirring with should leave tracks behind. It takes a good five minutes or so to coagulate, so have some patience.

When the dairy is thickened, pour it into the muslin-lined colander and let it drain for about an hour at room temperature. Carefully spoon the cheese into a container, cover, and refrigerate overnight; in a dessert emergency, you can use it once it’s chilled a couple of hours. It will keep in the refrigerator up to two weeks, not that you’ll have any around that long.

Mascarpone has many uses: cannoli, tiramisu, cheesecake, or it can be served plain. I used it to make the dessert pictured above, which has quartered strawberries in mint simple syrup on the bottom, mascarpone, and Rainier cherries on top. The dollop on top that looks like whipped cream? More mascarpone. Delicious.

Pickled Beets

In the garden, the beets are beginning to look like they’re ready to eat. If I have a large crop, I’ll want to pickle some of them.

There are three steps required for good pickled beets, and all three take some time. First you need to make a good picking vinegar, then the beets need to be roasted, and finally you’ll preserve the beets in the vinegar and wait at least a month.

Pickling Vinegar

1 tablespoon whole cloves
1 tablespoon whole allspice berries
1 tablespoon pink peppercorns
1½ teaspoons white peppercorns
2 mace blades
2 cinnamon sticks
5 cups white wine vinegar

Bring to a boil, then cool slightly and pour into a glass container. Store in a cool, dark place for 2 weeks. Strain.

Now that your vinegar is ready, roast the beets. I suggest wrapping them in foil and roasting them slowly to release as much sugar as possible. As soon as the beets are cool enough to handle, peel them. Then slice, dice, quarter, or leave baby beets whole.

Put the beets into one or more sterilized jars, leaving plenty of room for the vinegar to cover them. If you wish, put some of the whole spices from the vinegar recipe into the jars as well. For spicy beets, add chiles to taste. Chipotles work nicely if you want a smoky heat.

Bring the strained vinegar to a boil and carefully pour it into the jars to cover the beets. Seal the jars and store in a cool, dry place for at least a month, or up to two months for best flavor.

If you don’t have time to make pickling vinegar, distribute the spices from the recipe evenly between the jars and add boiling vinegar. The flavors won’t have as much time to develop, but the pickle will still be okay.