Recipe for Carrots with Rosemary and Orange

Wondering what to do with those lovely bright orange carrots that you bought at the Farmers Market last weekend? Well, what about this side salad of carrots with rosemary and orange? The recipe for rosmariinimarinoidut porkkanat is from Finfood - a Finnish state-supported agency whose sole purpose is to promote good food, local produce, and healthy eating. Sounds nice and virtuous, doesn't it! The joys of Nordic welfare state..

I followed the recipe to the letter to start with. Next time - and as long as I have some nice organic carrots there will definitely be a next time - I'll add a bit less oil and sugar, otherwise I'll stick to it.

Carrots with Rosemary and Orange
(Rosmariiniporgandid)



500 grams of carrots
1-2 onions
300 ml water
1 tsp sea salt
3 Tbsp sugar
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
grated orange zest (optional)
100 ml orange juice
3 Tbsp rapeseed oil* or light olive oil
black peppercorns, slightly crushed

Peel the carrots and onions and slice both thinly. Put into a large saucepan, add water, sugar, salt, rosemary and some orange zest.



Bring to the boil, covered, and simmer until carrots are done, but still a bit crunchy (al dente then:)
Let it cool a little, remove the cooked rosemary sprig. Add the orange juice, oil and some fresh chopped rosemary.
Put into jars and let it stand for at least 24 hours in a fridge, so the flavours could develop.

Rosemary flavoured carrots would add a nice tough to poultry, meat, grilled goat cheese etc. I can personally add that they are also absolutely delicious for nibbling on their own (you just need a fork to get them out of the jar and into your mouth). Here's a near-perfect late night dinner I had on Sunday:



Near-perfect, as I couldn't find any crispy baguettes at 10pm in Edinburgh - not surprisingly, as I must have been the only person in the Scottish capital craving for crispy carbs late at night. But I had got peckish after seeing a fantastic Omid Djalili show at the Fringe - and as there were no baguettes at sight, I had to go for some rather bland pita bread instead. Not bad, actually, but I think the rosemary carrots are definitely more crispy-baguette-kind-of-carrots than toasted-pita-bread-kind-of-carrots (even if the latter are organic etc..)

Consume within a week.

* Rapeseed oil is grown locally both in Finland (rapsiöljy) and Estonia (rapsiõli) and it's being heavily promoted these days. It's the only oil plant (Brassica rapa var. oleifera) that thrives so high up in the North (so it's local), and it has a very balanced fatty acid combination, containing more saturated (good) fats than olive oil (so it's also healthy), making it suitable both for using in salads and mayonnaise as well as for frying and baking (so it's also versatile). The cold pressed rape oil is often referred to as 'virgin oil' in Finland, a title that is usually reserved for cold pressed olive oil...

UPDATE 30.8.2005:
See how fellow foodblogger Paz recreated this recipe.