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Carrots are among the vegetables that I usually either feed to other people or make into dessert. And I do make a pretty good carrot cake, but it’s got a lot more than four ingredients, not to mention it’s not exactly my own invention. (I have created a carrot soup, but now it’s time for something else.)
Though I may not like carrots, I never mind a little shredded carrot in a dish, as long as it goes with the other ingredients. There’s not enough of the taste to bother me, and the color livens up the food visually. So that’s the way my thoughts tended this week. Another thought that hit me this week was just how much green onions taste like spring — so they’d be a good match for the somewhat wintery carrots, just as the oniony flavor would complement the sweet. All that was needed was some way to give the background rice a little taste, and cooking it in chicken broth does that.
If I can come up with a four-ingredient carrot dessert, I’ll share it with you next time, but don’t get your hopes up; transformations like that call for fat and sweetener, which doesn’t leave much room. Hmm, carrot salad can be pretty nice . . .
If you just want to use carrots for decoration, try making a carrot curl. Peel off a long strip of carrot with a vegetable peeler (after you’ve peeled off the skin, of course), wind it into a spiral, fasten it with a toothpick, and put it in water in the fridge for a couple of hours. If someone eats them, that’s fine; this may even be a way to get your kids to eat vegetables.
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 1 cup uncooked white rice
- 1 large carrot
- Green onions to taste — chopped
- Bring the chicken broth to a boil.
- Carefully add the rice and cover.
- Turn the heat to low.
- Let the rice cook for 20 minutes or until it absorbs all the broth. (Short version: cook a cup of rice using chicken broth instead of water.)
- Meanwhile, wash and peel the carrot.
- Shred it coarsely with a cheese grater. (Too fine and it’ll turn watery.)
- When the rice has about five minutes left to cook, carefully stir in the grated carrot.
- Cover and continue cooking.
- When rice is done, remove from heat and stir in green onions.
