Friday, November 2, 2018

CARROT PUREE WITH GINGER AND ORANGE

As I keep saying, Irish cooking has been changing rapidly, and all for the better.

Halloween is past, and now we’re facing winter. Something about the cold and the wet makes me turn to soup. Making soup is easy and required ordinary ingredients that most people already have or can get easily. And it keeps well—in fact, it often improves in flavor after a couple of days.

I was torn between hunting for a lentil recipe or a carrot one. The carrots won, because they’re orange, so I gave a belated salute to Halloween pumpkins. Back in the day, Irish carrot soup would have been made of carrots, potatoes and maybe an onion. But this Irish recipe calls for orange juice, orange zest, lemon juice, and grated fresh ginger. And once your carrots are cooked through, you finish it an a food processor.

Carrot Puree with Ginger and Orange 
(adapted from Margaret Johnson’s The New Irish Table)

Ingredients: (this is the full recipe—I made half a recipe)

4 pounds carrots

3 Tblsp sugar
1/3 cup orange juice
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter (Kerrygold!) at room temperature
1-1/2 Tblsp minced fresh ginger (I grated mine)
1 Tblsp grated orange zest
1 Tblsp fresh lemon juice
1 Tblsp sugar
salt and pepper if needed

Instructions:

Peel the carrots, then cut into half-inch pieces. Cook for 20-25 minutes in boiling salted water to which you’ve added 3 Tblsp sugar. When the carrots are tender, drain them and mash them.







While the carrots are cooking you can grate and squeeze or whatever the other ingredients.



Transfer the mashed carrots to a food processor [another good reason for using only two pounds of carrots—if I’d used four pounds, I think the food processor would have exploded all over the kitchen). Add the orange juice, butter, ginger, orange zest, lemon juice, and sugar.

Process until the mixture is smooth. Season with salt and pepper to taste.




You may have noticed that this recipe is called a “puree” so it will be thick. You could serve it that way as a side dish. If you want soup instead, add some chicken stock or water until you get to the consistency you want.

I went with soup, and served it with homemade wholegrain soda bread, now that I’ve found a recipe that works!





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2 comments:

  1. What a fun combination of flavors!

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  2. I love the book cover! The soup sounds very good also. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete