Blackened Carrots with Other Stuff

I've posted about blackened or charred carrots here before. And because I like them so much, I'll do it again.

We first encountered the concept of charring carrots over direct flame at Bobby Flay's NY restaurant, Gato. There he serves the black beauties with Middle Eastern flavors like harissa + mint + yogurt. Almost any flavor profile can work with charred carrots - they are simply sweet with a nice caramelization. (No, they don't taste burnt.) While I've done the harissa thing myself, I thought I'd take the flavors up further into the Mediterranean by adding a pesto. We had a bunch of arugula hanging around, so that became the sauce's base. We were also on a weird self-imposed no-dairy, no-wheat, no-sugar diet for the month of August. While yogurt seems completely natural for this dish (at least to us and Bobby Flay), it was a no-no for us. A nice creamy alternative that was allowable is an aioli made with white beans. And garlic, of course (because it's not aioli without garlic). But not just any garlic - black garlic. Black garlic is fermented, which creates the black color and brings out the bulb's inherent sweetness. It's less pungent than fresh or cured garlic (most supermarket garlic and onions have been cured or dried for longterm storage) but is extremely flavorful. The only drawback is that black garlic's soft texture makes it a bit hard to peel and chop. But we're using a food pro here, so no worries.

There are a lot of steps to this recipe, but none are difficult. The aioli and pesto can be made in minutes in the same food processor (rinse it out between sauces). Prepare them while the granola is in the oven. While everything is chilling, make the carrots.

There will be lots of leftover granola, which can be used as a topping for any savory vegetable preparation, or sprinkled on plain yogurt for breakfast. Toss leftover pesto with pasta on another night, and use the aioli as a sandwich spread or dip. It's all good.

The finished dish is vegetarian; it's completely vegan if you leave the Parm out of the pesto and skip the granola. And it tastes amazing.

Blackened Carrots
If you don't have a gas oven, you can blacken your carrots on a grill.

1 bunch slender young carrots with tops, scrubbed but not peeled
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400°F. Cut off the tops of the carrots and discard (or save some for the pesto!). Place the carrots directly on your stove's gas burner, as if you were roasting bell peppers. Cook until charred on all sides, turning frequently. As each carrot becomes charred enough, place it on a foil-lined baking sheet. Once all the carrots are on the foil, drizzle them with some olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

Roast in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until tender.

White Bean Black Garlic Aioli

1 (15 ounce) can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1⁄4 teaspoon salt
3-4 cloves black garlic
1⁄4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper

Place the beans, lemon juice, and salt, and black garlic in a food processor with the olive oil. Whiz to a puree. If it seems too thick, add more oil. Season with the pepper, adding additional salt and lemon juice to allow for personal tastes. Store in the fridge and eat within a week.

Arugula Pesto

Pesto isn't rocket science. If you don't have 2 cups of arugula, use whatever you have and add smaller quantities of everything else. If you have lots of mixed soft herbs like parsley, cilantro, mint, use them too. As long as it has cheese, nuts, garlic, and olive oil, it will taste good. Oh - allergic to nuts? Leave them out!

2 cups arugula leaves
½ cup grated Parmesan Cheese
¼ cup toasted nuts (I used cashews)
1 clove garlic, peeled
Extra virgin olive oil
Lemon juice
Kosher salt

Put arugula, cheese, nuts, and garlic in the bowl of a food processor. Drizzle in the EVOO and process to a paste of whatever consistency you prefer. Like thinner pesto? add more oil. Like it thick, add less. Season to taste with lemon juice and salt. Store in a tightly covered container in the fridge and eat within a week.

Savory Granola (adapted from Bon Appetit)

1 cup old-fashioned oats
½ cup walnuts
½ cup raw pumpkin seeds
¼ cup raw black and white sesame seeds
3 tablespoons hemp seeds
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
1 teaspoon caraway or dill seeds
1/2 teaspoon nigella/charnushka seeds
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 large egg white, beaten to blend
¼ cup olive oil
1 tablespoon agave syrup

Preheat oven to 350°.  In a large bowl, combine oats, walnuts, seeds, salt, and cayenne pepper with egg white, oil, and agave syrup until everything is coated. Transfer mixture to a rimmed baking sheet and bake, stirring once, until golden, 25–30 minutes. Let cool. Store in a zip top plastic bag.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Mushroom Bolognese

I feel like we ate really poorly during the holidays and well into 2016. Far too much meat and pastry, not nearly enough vegetables and whole grains. So I succumbed to the lure of a box of produce from Washington's Green Grocer, which was delivered on the same day that we happened to go grocery shopping. We ended up with a pound and a half of crimini mushrooms as a result (a bunch of other stuff, too).

Mushroom soup was almost an option, but I felt Mr Minx would be more satisfied by a pasta dish. Why not mince the mushrooms and use them as a meat substitute? So I put together a pretty delicious (if I do say so myself) vegetarian bolognese, using up a pound of the mushrooms in the process. I wanted to really up the umami factor, so we wouldn't miss the meat. Adding soy sauce and black garlic helped with that, and a bit of leftover ricotta (from our Christmas day lasagna) added a bit more richness to the sauce. One could leave out the ricotta and the Parm garnish and have a really nice vegan sauce, but I liked the cheesy additions.

Mushroom Bolognese

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 medium onion, finely chopped
Salt
1 lb crimini mushrooms, washed, wiped, and finely chopped
2 carrots, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
6 cloves black garlic, minced
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 can tomato paste
1/2 cup red wine
1 32-oz can whole peeled tomatoes
1/2 cup part skim ricotta cheese
Pinch dried thyme
Pinch dried oregano
Pinch dried rosemary
Pinch red pepper flakes
Pinch smoked paprika
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley
Parm for serving

Heat one tablespoon of the oil in a large frying pan. Add the onion and a pinch of salt. Cook for 2-3 minutes over medium high heat, until softened. Add the mushrooms, carrots, and celery. Cover the pan and sweat the mushrooms until they release all their liquid. After about 5 minutes, uncover the pan and turn the heat up to high to burn off any additional liquid.

Reduce the temperature to medium. Add the other tablespoon of olive oil to the pan and stir the vegetables well to coat. Fry for about 2 minutes, then add the garlics and fry an additional minute. Stir in the soy and the tomato paste. Continue to cook the tomato paste veg mixture until the paste darkens, about 2 minutes. Add the wine and stir well. Cook until the liquid is mostly evaporated, stirring regularly; it should take only a minute or so.

Chop the tomatoes into smaller pieces by running a knife through them while still in the can. Dump the tomatoes and their juice into the frying pan and stir well. Turn heat down to low and simmer sauce for 1 hour. Check periodically to see if there's enough liquid in the pan; if not, add a bit of water. The sauce should be thick, but not dry.

Stir in the ricotta cheese. Season with the herbs. I don't like a particularly herby sauce, unless it's fresh basil, and our garden is pretty dead right now. Add more than a pinch of the herbs, if you'd like. The smoked paprika just makes it taste a little more meaty, and the parsley adds a bit of brightness.

Serve with pasta of your choice, sprinkled with Parm to finish.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Fancy Schmancy

Sometimes I'm too ambitious for my own good. The other day, I decided to make some mahi mahi for dinner. Because we had a couple of oranges and ripe avocados, my original idea was to make a pretty orange-and-green salsa-like topping for the fish. And then I noticed that we had a handful of cloves of black garlic and mmm...wouldn't that taste good?

Unfortunately, black garlic + citrus + avocado = ugly.

I cut the orange into supremes, something that always gives me trouble. I can usually get three or four slices cut before the whole fruit collapses in my hand, making the remaining slices impossible to remove whole. The avocado was a bit too soft, so rather than nice cubes, I had ones that were a bit smooshy on the edges. And unfortunately, the black garlic lent its blackness to the mix, almost like a jolt of squid ink. Oops! Rather than a broken orange/pasty avocado/black stuff salsa, I mashed it all into a guacamole...which was a more uniform army-green color.

Very ugly, but also very delicious. I'd eat this slop again in a heartbeat!

The guac in this pic has been color-enhanced for your protection.

Citrus Guacamole

2 navel oranges
5 cloves black garlic
2 ripe Haas avocados
juice of half a lime
1 scallion, green and white parts, chopped
salt and pepper

Slice bottom end off orange. Hold it, cut side down, on a cutting board and with a very sharp knife, slice off the skin and pith, leaving only the flesh. Pick up the orange and cut out slices between the membranes, placing orange "meat" in a bowl. After removing all of the "meat" of the orange, squeeze out the remaining juice from the leftover pulp into the bowl over the segments. Repeat with second orange.

Mince the black garlic as well as you can (the stuff is super-sticky) and add to oranges and juice in bowl

Cut avocados in half, twist out pit, and scoop out the flesh with a spoon into the bowl with the orange and garlic. Mash well. Add lime juice, scallions, and salt and pepper to taste.

It's not pretty, but it tastes damn good.
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If you're curious about the other elements in the photo, the mahi (broiled simply with salt and pepper and a dash of olive oil) is atop a bed of Trader Joe's brown fried rice with mushrooms, with the addition of a bit of napa cabbage and turkey bacon. Drizzled on the plate is a bit of cilantro oil made by whizzing cilantro in a blender with canola oil and straining out the solids. More turkey bacon was used as garnish, as were fresh chives from the garden.

Posted by theminx on Minxeats.com.

Black Garlic

Last season on Top Chef, Hosea made a monkfish dish with black garlic. Always curious, I had to find some and use it. I figured it was some new variety of garlic, but it turned out to be regular garlic that has been fermented in a special process that not only turns it black, it gives it a sweet caramelized flavor and gooey texture.

I bought my black garlic online at saucenspice.com.

Two bulbs of very light weight garlic that looks like this out of the package:

See - I wasn't kidding - it's very black.

I decided to make something simple with it - black garlic olive oil to use on pasta. Since the garlic was kinda gooey, it was hard to mince. Above is three cloves in about 2 tablespoons of oil, and below is what it looked like on the pasta. (We had a leftover ear of yellow corn, so I chopped that up and tossed it in as well. I'm always trying to recapture the essence of perhaps the best pasta dish I have ever eaten, one made with squid ink pasta and corn, at Babbo. I always fail.)

One might think that three cloves of garlic would add a big hit of garlic flavor, but alas, it did not. The stuff is extremely mild.

Next time, 5 cloves.