In my relentless quest to establish a vlog-worthy morning routine, I’ve developed a bit of a fixation with fresh-pressed juice. How do I get it done, you ask? Well, I do not own a juicer. It is an incredibly tedious and inefficient process of mini blenders and sieves, and it is surely making me late.
I have two house juices: my “gruice,” a Kermit-colored elixir of celery, spinach, cucumber, ginger and pineapple, and what I’ve started to call my “sunrise juice,” a vibrant concoction of grapefruit, ginger, turmeric root and carrot.
The latter has me blowing through bundles of carrots at a clip normally reserved for show horses. But at the store last week, a bunch of cartoonish, “What’s up, Doc?” carrots, replete with long, foliate tops, made me briefly reconsider their juice destiny.
I still pulverized them. But if I’m really honest with myself, they would have been better off in Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipe for grilled carrots with yogurt, carrot-top oil and dukkah. He turns those fresh, tender greens into a slick dressing with just the tops, some tarragon, olive oil, salt and pepper, and a blender.
A showering of hazelnuts, pine nuts, coriander seeds, sesame seeds, cumin seeds, oregano and sweet paprika further finishes things off. “You’ll have more than you need,” Yotam writes of the dukkah, but your beans, squash and salads will be better for it. Stunning in its presentation and textures, it’s the kind of dish I’d expect to eat in some hot restaurant’s dining room.
Grilled Carrots With Yogurt, Carrot-Top Oil and Dukkah
A pile of tender, slender carrots topped with crisp, crunchy bits is a winning template, and Sue Li’s five-spice roasted carrots with toasted almonds and Yewande Komolafe’s roasted carrots with yaji spice relish further drive home that point.
But you have my permission — nay, my encouragement — to dice, slice and grate your carrots to your soul’s content. You’ll cover at least two of those preparations with Alexa Weibel’s beloved carrot risotto with chile crisp, which is gently sweetened by and garnished with the root vegetable. “This is the best recipe I’ve ever made,” wrote a reader. “It saw directly into my soul.” Consider theirs contented!
Carrots make a somewhat unexpected but very welcome appearance in Pati Jinich’s hearty bean nachos with spicy salsa as tender, nubby bits among creamy pintos and softened onion and celery. And they lend their sweetness to Melissa Clark’s five-star red lentil barley stew, where they bob among a broth fragrant with baharat, turmeric and cinnamon.
Or pull out the blender and meet me back where we started, with puréed carrots, ginger and turmeric. Hold the grapefruit and grab a cup of coconut milk, and you’re well on your way to Mark Bittman’s curried carrot soup — and a vlog-worthy evening.
Curried Carrot and Coconut Soup
One More Thing!
After last week’s newsletter, Alex, a reader, shared a delightful journal entry he wrote over the summer about arugula. Some of it is below:
“Arugula is tasty enough without salad dressing. Who are we as humans to tell arugula, ‘You are not good enough on your own.’ We outfit the arugula with necklaces and rings and other ornate dress, and though it seems better to us because we like shiny things, the arugula suffers, not under the weight of the dress, but looking in the mirror, it exclaims, ‘This isn’t me!’ Indeed, who will truly understand arugula for who it really is?”
May we all strive to better understand arugula. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
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