Chef's Garden Finishing the Carrots

 

Kind of a great and bad time of the year. Great as everything is in and
fresh and great tasting and wonderful! Bad because the tasks for the
gleaning are just starting and gleaning means the end of the fresh
vegetables! So today we examine the cleaning of the carrot rows. This it
the last of the stragglers, ready to be put up for a winters day when we
need a reminder of things to come again next year!



So here they are just pulled








Then I wash them off








Then I top them and they start to look like something you would cook
with:








Then they are peeled in prep for the food processor








This gleaning produced three processor bowls full of carrot slices. I
like to prepare them with a blanching before freezing them. I like to
use a pasta cooker for the task, as just with pasta the pasta cooker has
a unique ability to stack and drain for you











If you have not used your pasta pot in a while better break it out. They
get lonely when left alone in the cabinet or hanging on the rack. This
is part of the Simply Calphalon set. They screwed the set up a few years
back by switching the fry pans to non-stick instead of straight
stainless. I love this pure stainless steel set. It cooks like nothing
else in my opinion. Straight heavy bottom stainless is a fantastic
cooking tool. You can still get the set with the heavy sauce pans and
such, but both fry pans will be coated in teflon. While I think non
stick has its place, I think stainless and copper rule!



Next I vacuum pack the produce for the freezer. Now let talk about
another pet peeve I have, over sizing the portions. There is a tendency
to heap food into the bags willy nilly. I submit that digital scales are
cheap enough now that every single kitchen should have one. And you
should use it to put up your produce. It drives me nuts to see people
putting 2 pounds of vegetables into a freezer bag with only two or three
people living in the household. Weigh it and all the work you put into
the garden will reward you far longer into the winter months. I figure 4
ounces per member of the household. So with my daught at college I am
packaging at 12 ounces. And I use a foodsaver vacuum packer. You can get
them dirt cheap now at jardendirect.com. They also sell the bags in 12
inch and 6 inch rolls 18 and 22 feet continuous respectively. This
allows me to package small amounts for my daughter at college. (Hey if
you ate fresh food you whole life it is a little hard to adjust to
institutional cooking) Vaccum packing is a fantastic way to store
vegetables from the garden.








Then it is off to one of our freezers








Bitter sweet, the carrots are complete, the work is done for the year on
carrots, but no more fresh carrots from the garden till next year!



Til will talk again put a few veggies and fruits up, you will be
rewarded this winter with a reminder of warm times when fresh foods
abound!

Chef Bob Ballantyne

The Cowboy and The Rose Catering

Grand Junction, Colorado, USA