Sweet, creamy, and autumnal-y, we had carrots with honey and butter. Plus, I tested out Rosner’s Rules of garnishing.
New York City schools reopened last week, and after a bit of rain, the weather turned cool for a day. We felt the seasonal shift of the dinner plate too, making mashed potatoes for the first time i four months and brightening things up with these carrots. I also threw together a little green salad using the carrot tops and old cucumbers.
There are a lot of good ways to make carrots, but one of my favorites is this stodgy old fashioned recipe. These days, we’re a lot more likely to roast our carrots in the oven, but these are steamed (gently, don’t over do it. We’re not making baby food).
We have a little metal steam basket that sits in the pan, the kind of thing my mother used for literally every vegetable in the 1980s. It comes out just a few times a year now, but its incredibly good at what it promises to do—steaming vegetables.
There’s some foods that will always be a kind of nostalgia, and I’m surprised to say that for me, it’s this carrot recipe. This actually isn’t a food I made in childhood, but one I learned how to do on my own as a young adult. I think the appeal is it was one of the first dishes that I started making differently than my mother, and to be honest, better (but don’t tell her that).
I don’t know how to explain it, but there is something magical that happens to butter and honey when they combine with carrots. It’s worth noting that I have also made this recipe with hot honey for a little extra spice, but I was looking to keep things traditional. We were serving it with mashed potatoes, after all, like we’re living in a Leave It to Beaver episode.
But then a little bit of magic happened. I decided to follow Rosner’s Rules of garnishing. If you haven’t been following along, back in August, food writer Helen Rosner declared the best way to serve any dish is with two finishing garnishes. Turns out she’s absolutely right.
On these carrots I plucked a few greens from the carrot top and chopped them up. This made them look so pretty I decided to follow Rosner’s Rule and add some lemon zest. Well, turns out I didn’t have any lemon zest, so a splash of lemon juice to brighten everything would have to do. But still I stand by the rules.
Honey Butter Glazed Carrots With Two Garnishes
Ingredients
Skinny carrots, with greens
2 big squirts of Honey, local is best
1 tablespoon of Butter (plus a little extra for finishing)
Lemon zest
Instructions
Peel your carrots and remove tops
Reserve one green for garnish later
Cut carrots into medallions
Steam carrots until al dente
Combine hot carrots, butter and lemon
Season with salt
Stir together
Drop that last pat of butter on top of the carrots and let it melt
Finely chop the leaves of one carrot green
Toss green with lemon zest (or substitute lemon juice if you don’t have lemons)
Garnish just before serving.
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