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!

Beets Two Ways

Beets are magical. The tuber is sweet, especially when it’s roasted, and the greens are a tangy and nutritious addition to any meal.

When I have beets to roast I don’t mess about. I drizzle them with extra virgin olive oil, sprinkle some sel gris or kosher salt on top, cover them with foil, and put them into the oven (350°F/175°C). After about 2-3 hours (depending on the size of the beet) they should be ready. They won’t overcook if you leave them in the oven an extra quarter hour or so, they’ll just caramelize. I like to finish them with a drizzle of Villa Manodori Balsamic Vinegar.

The greens require a bit more work. A thorough cleaning is necessary, and I like to remove most of the stalk. You can braise them as-is with some onion, garlic, and maybe bacon. I used them as part of a skillet supper.

An inexpensive steak, like a round steak, is perfect for a simple skillet supper, and you can stretch a small steak to feed several people. Slice it rather thinly against the grain so that it’ll cook rapidly yet be tender. Be careful to clean it up by trimming excess fat and removing tendon and silver skin.

Chop up some aromatics–onion, sweet red pepper, some carrot if you like. Peel and dice a tomato or two, or cut some cherry tomatoes in half. Make a chiffonade from the greens, or at least tear them into smaller pieces. Get some garlic confit out of the refrigerator, or mince a clove or two of fresh garlic.

The actual ingredients really don’t matter that much, use whatever you have. The quantity doesn’t much matter either, just use more veggies than meat, and make enough for however many are eating plus one or two, because it’s mostly veggies, so you want to encourage a second helping.

Preheat your fry pan with some extra virgin olive oil–keep the heat down between medium-low and medium. Once the oil starts to shimmer, toss in the aromatics. Stir for a minute or so, then add the steak and garlic. Season lightly with salt and pepper. When the steak is mostly done, add the greens. After a couple more minutes the greens should be wilted and the steak should have given up some of its water. Now toss in the tomato and add a splash of wine. Give the tomatoes just enough time to soften, and it’s done.

A simple dish like this will be successful if you follow a few guidelines. Use lots of fresh veggies of as many colors as you can manage; you need to eat all the colors for complete nutrition, and the color makes it more appetizing. Use an inexpensive protein–no need for porterhouse here. Remember the wine! Some alcohol is vital if you want to access all the flavors and nutrients, and it’ll cook out by the time the pan is deglazed.

Finally, the most important thing to remember is that there’s no recipe, and there are no recipe police looking over your shoulder to make sure you used exactly the same things I did in exactly the same proportions. Just get into the kitchen, use what you have, and create your own skillet supper. It’ll be great!

Roast Chicken

Roast Chicken

I bought a whole chicken on sale. It was rather late in the day and I didn’t feel like doing anything difficult, so I decided to roast it.

Roasting a chicken is really easy. You’ll need a roasting pan and rack, or a nice grill pan, which is what I used. Start by rinsing the chicken, then drying it thoroughly, inside and out, with a paper towel. Let the chicken air dry while the oven is warming to 425º. Once the oven is ready, put the chicken in for 20 minutes, the reduce the heat to 400º. Roast it about another 40 minutes, until the temperature of the thigh meat reaches 175º.

While the oven was warming, I made a compound butter to put under the skin. A compound butter is butter mixed with seasonings, in this case minced garlic and a few herbs. I gently pushed the compound butter under the breast skin and massaged it into the breast meat to add flavor and moistness. I also crushed three cloves of garlic, rubbed the interior cavity of the chicken with the garlic and some salt, and then left the garlic in the cavity to add more flavor. Some fruit or herbs would have worked just as well.

I wanted a sauce with the chicken, so I sautéed the neck, heart(s) and gizzard with about one-half tablespoon each butter and olive oil, plus about one-quarter onion, minced. Once that was nicely browned, I deglazed the pan with about two tablespoons of chardonnay and added a cup of water. I then simmered until the liquid reduced to about half a cup. I strained and reserved the liquid.

The pan went back onto the stove with about two tablespoons each of butter and olive oil, in which I sautéed some sliced mushrooms. When they gave up their moisture I added some leftover caramelized onions, the reserved liquid, and about half a cup of red wine, and cooked until the liquid was reduced in half. I then added about a quarter cup of crème fraîche and simmered until the liquid was once again reduced to about a half cup.

A side salad, plus bow tie pasta dressed with extra virgin olive oil, a chiffonade of basil, and freshly cracked black pepper completed the meal for two. Total time was about 90 minutes, including waiting. Half the chicken remains to be used for something else.