Recipe: Carrot Top Stock

In the comments, suek writes:

Carrot top soup?? More info, please! 

We have a veggie stand about a half mile down the road. If we stop in to buy something like beets, the clerk always asks "do you want me to take the tops off?"..... NO...absolutely not....thank you. We have the beet greens for dinner that night (they don't hold very well). The beets themselves will hold way longer. 

I've never thought about using carrot tops - other than feeding them to the horses. I'm guessing ... add onions, chicken broth, salt pepper and ???? maybe celery?

Before we get to the carrot tops, let's remember that beet greens = Swiss chard. It's the same plant. One's been selected-- think Gregor Mendel-- for roots, the other for vegetative growth. 

I cannot for the life of me grow beets. But I can grow beet greens.

And now to the carrot tops.


Carrot top stock is rich. In my humble opinion, it rivals beef stock in complexity-- but is of course vegan. As Miss M notes, it has a suggestion of ginger with respect to the aroma. Color-wise, it resembles weak beef stock. (That would be real beef stock, not something made from a cube.) 

"They don't smell like this in the grocery store," said Miss M.

"No. No they don't," said I. 

I pulled carrots today. I rinsed the dirt off in the outdoor sink and moved them inside.

Miss M took it from there.

She sorted the carrots into 'salad' and 'cooking' piles according to the 'peel' criteria-- if it's too small to peel... .  She then cut off the tops, rinsed them once more-- Miss M does not care for dirt-- and placed the tops into the gumbo pot along with some parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme & onion so I could simmer a few quarts of carrot top stock. We love carrot top stock. 

So for a few hours in mid-day, the kitchen smelled liked homegrown carrots. 

And then it smelled like pumpkin. 

I've begun this story in the middle of things-- for you literary  folk, that's in medias res. Earlier in the day, Mr Big Food & I had rectified his records with the true inventory of my freezer that I'd conducted a few days ago. We discovered 3 2 pounds of mashed pumpkin from last year. We used one pound today to make pumpkin pound cake. 

Like sucks, don't you know?

Later on it smelled like citrus and chicken and peppers. We still have 9 5 whole halves of pepper halves for stuffing from 2012!!!! And so we had a delightful chicken dish with an orange, onion, herb topping. It was good. And peppers stuffed with shredded carrots and whatnot.

Here's the funny thing. I've noticed-- though I can't point to any specific reference-- that other folks who garden do what we did today. The veggie freezer is pretty empty right now. It's a good time to tidy it up, take stock, and consume the last of yesteryear's harvest. 

And begin again! 

Recipe: Kentucky Minted Carrots

We forgot to get more carrots so Mr. Big Food added some peas.

For Derby Day, of course!

KENTUCKY MINTED CARROTS

Serves 4

1 lb (8-10) carrots, scraped and cut diagonally into ¼ inch lengths

1 C water

1 tsp salt

3 Tbsp butter, cut into bits

Freshly ground black pepper

2 Tbsp fresh mint leaves, cut coarse

Place carrot slices into a 1 quart saucepan, add water and salt, cover pan tightly, and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to moderate and cook carrots for about 15 minutes, or until water is almost completely evaporated and carrots are tender but still slightly resistant to the bite. Stir in butter and several grindings of black pepper, remove from heat, toss carrots lightly with mint leaves, taste for seasonings, and serve at once in a heated vegetable dish.

Recipe: Carrot Casserole I

Ready to go into the oven

Ready to eat!

CARROT CASSEROLE I  

4 C carrots, peeled, sliced, cooked, and drained 
1 medium onion, chopped 
3 Tbsp butter 
¼ tsp pepper 
10 ½ oz can condensed cream of onion soup 
1/3 C melted butter 
1 C shredded cheese 
2 C prepared stuffing, crumbled (see recipes in Stuffings section) 

Preheat oven to 350°. Fry onion in butter. Stir in soup, pepper, and cheese, combine with carrots, and pour into a greased casserole. Toss stuffing with melted butter and spoon over carrot mixture. Bake 20 minutes.

Lima beans

Last evening as we were preparing a truly delicious-- and simple-- meal, I looked in the pantry and asked Mr. Big Food, "Do you know we still have dried lima beans from last year's garden?"

Mr Big Food responded, "Yes. Good thing, too."

~~

Via Instapundit:

CHANGE: Corn and soybeans hit record highs, stir food crisis fear. “Corn prices crossed into uncharted territory above $8 per bushel — about three-and-a-half times the average price 10 years ago of $2.28. Soybeans punched past $17 for the first time — also three-and-a-half times the 2002 average. Analysts said that while forecasts for continued dry weather are expected to sustain the rally, corn prices could be vulnerable to any move by the government to lower the amount of corn-based ethanol blenders are required to mix with gasoline. Even as chatter about a possible revision of the ethanol mandate has escalated, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, the former governor of top farm state Iowa, has ruled out such a move.”

Related: World Braced for New Food Crisis.

The drought in the US, which supplies nearly half the world’s exports of corn and much of its soyabeans and wheat, will reverberate well beyond its borders, affecting consumers from Egypt to China.

“I’ve been in the business more than 30 years and this is by far and away the most serious weather issue and supply and demand problem that I have seen by a mile,” said a senior executive at a trading house. “It’s not even comparable to 2007-08.”

David Nelson, global strategist at Rabobank, added: “Today the [US crop] disaster is real, whereas to some degree the big run-up in prices in 2008 was speculatively driven.”

Oh, goody.

 It's not too late to think about putting in a fall garden. More here, and here.

~~

HOLY COW! IT'S RAINING!

Smoke & Windows

The view from the kitchen window

I did some more berry scouting today.

I need to figure out an efficient way to harvest the many many small ripe berries.

We had another summer salad. I pulled the red carrots, and tested the rest.

We gnawed on things covered in homemade blue cheese dressing.

As I write, Rocky & Missy are reestablishing some boundaries... remembering some rules.

And are now both crashed. On opposite sides of the room. 

Decoration Day

Red, white & blue

Rhode Island made Memorial Day-- not Decoration Day which was originally honored soldiers killed in the Civil War and was observed only in the northern states-- a legal holiday in 1874. By 1910 all states and territories had done likewise except Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. [According to my crappy old Encyclopedia Britannica (1962) whose entry for "Memorial Day" refers me to the entry on Decoration Day.]

Recipe: Carrot Souffle II

CARROT SOUFFLE II

Serves 6

½ stick butter

¼ C diced celery

1 Tbsp onion, chopped fine

½ tsp pepper

½ tsp salt

¼ C sifted flour

3 eggs, separated

2 C mashed carrots

Preheat oven to 350^o. Melt butter, add celery, onion, pepper, and salt, and cook until onion is lightly browned. Blend in flour, remove from heat, stir a little hot mixture into beaten egg yolks (taking care not to curdle yolks), and add mixture back to hot mixture, blending thoroughly. Blend in carrots, then stiffly beaten egg whites. Place mixture into a well-greased 1 quart casserole, place casserole in a pan of hot water, and bake for about 45 minutes or until firm in center.

Recipe: Carrots au Gratin

We had these with last nights Baked Ham Slices with Pineapple. Mr. Big Food substituted French fried onions for crackers.

Very good!

“A delicious way of serving colorful vitamin-rich carrots”

CARROTS AU GRATIN

Serves 6

3 C carrots, peeled and diced, cooked 10 minutes in ½ inch boiling salted water or until tender, drained, any remaining cooking liquid reserved

6 soda crackers, crushed (1/4 C)

1 tsp onion salt

¼ C chopped bell pepper

Dash pepper

2 Tbsp butter, melted

½ C grated sharp cheese

Preheat oven to 425^o. Combine cracker crumbs, onion salt, bell pepper, and pepper, and alternate layers of drained carrots and cracker mixture in a greased 1 quart baking dish. Spoon on any remaining carrot liquid. Pour on butter, sprinkle with cheese, and bake 15 to 20 minutes or until cheese melts.

Carrots and spinach: I & I

Carrot Casserole I

Spinach Loaf I

Recipes forthcoming.

I don't remember when I've had such good spinach. Or carrots, for that matter.

~~

My seed order list includes more carrots. In general, they don't seem to mind the clay as much as I thought they would, especially since I till in a lot of peat.