A meal: Carrot Puree or what to do with all those carrots or how to jazz up leftover pasta before tomato season

So we have a lot of carrots. And I mean, a lot of carrots. People may wonder when we will be done with giving out carrots. And we have more carrots recently sown that will be for future CSA boxes. And we have an empty bed that will some day have carrots specifically for winter storage too.

During the week I had made a huge pot of pasta because I knew that the evening of our friday harvests for the CSA boxes, cooking dinner is just one more thing to do in the kitchen and then to have to clean everything up so we can prepare and package everything is more than we want to deal with. I made it two days before so that in fact we were eating leftover leftovers on our friday night harvest! And it still tasted good.

While the pasta itself is not the focus of this post, I will give the basic ingredients and methods here in case anyone wants to try out a simple non-tomato based pasta. We love pasta with white beans and greens!

The Pasta

1pkg Linguini or Spaghetti pasta or enough for your meal (or any pasta)
1c Cannellini beans cooked ahead of time (or just one can)
(we are crock pot people, always having a pot of beans on the ready for the next day's meal. 1c of dry beans equals 2c cooked)
Greens of Kale, Tat Soi chopped to desired fineness
Onion chopped
Garlic chopped or sliced
Fresh dill
olive oil
salt

Cook pasta in a large pot or dutch oven. Should take about 10 minutes. While the pasta is cooking, cook on medium heat with olive oil the onion, garlic, greens and dill just enough to wilt the greens and to brown the onions and garlic. Add Cannellini beans with its cooking water and salt and turn down heat to low and allow to sit and stew for a few minutes. I did not drain the water from the beans that were cooked in the crock pot and instead added the entire contents to the skillet. When pasta is done cooking, drain pasta and add your entire skillet of beans and greens to the pot of pasta and mix.

In case you are like us, we cook enough for dinner so that we don't have to make or buy something special for lunch or so we can have leftovers for the next evening. As I contemplated the next day's meal, I conjured up this recipe for a carrot puree. It could use a little tweaking, but it was still extra tasty and made the pasta into a new meal.

The Carrot Puree


As with any meal, we like to decide what beverage we think will pair well with the evening's meal. I chose a wine I got from BevMo on a buy 2 bottles, 5 cent deal day. I like white wines that are a bit on the dry side and have a somewhat minerally taste to the tongue. This bottle of Torrontes from Argentina from  the vineyard Machi  seemed to pair well.

Very simple beginnings for this puree.

Carrots chopped (5 carrots worked to make about 2 cups of puree)
Onion chopped (I used half an onion)
Dill chopped
white wine
water
salt

Begin to fry veggies in a skillet. You can begin to heat up your leftover pasta too. I always add a little water to a pot of leftover pasta so that the pasta steams from the bottom rather than burns.

Once everything is browned, then toss it all in the oven to roast while you begin to make your salad. (I love the oven for this very fact that you can let things cook and don't have to pay attention to it. Frying on the stove top, but then finishing off the meal in the oven. More oven cooking recipes are sure to follow.)

The Salad:

Greens (your choice, but here we used Speckles and Deer Tongue)

Onion (less than a quarter of a whole onion)

Peas (small handful)

Carrot (can we use any more carrots in this meal?!)

olive oil

balsamic vinegar 

salt and pepper

Begin by roughly chop your lettuce and place in a large bowl and set aside. Then roughly chopping each of the onion, peas, and carrot. The onion, pea, and carrot mixture is a variation of mirepoix I guess I sort of made up. Mirepoix is a French culinary version that involves onion, celery, and carrots. Most cultural cuisines have some form of a "holy trinity" base flavor complex.

Next drizzle these chopped veggies with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and add salt and pepper.

Using either a good chopping knife or a fancy mezzaluna, begin to chop into very small pieces, mixing the oil, vinegar, salt and pepper as you chop.

Add the chopped veggies to your chopped salad greens and drizzle a little more olive oil or balsamic vinegar and mix. Place in fridge to chill until the rest of the meal is ready.

 The Carrot Puree Continued:

Once veggies are roasted it is time to puree! Add about a half cup of wine to your blender. This ingredient is optional. You can simply use water as well. Begin to blend the veggies. Vitamix brand blenders are awesome for this type of puree. But, they are so expensive that it is like purchasing a car for your kitchen. But, our kitchen wouldn't be complete without it.

Once the carrot puree is mostly blended, I added a bit more water to just below the top of the puree and then the chopped dill and some salt. Blend. And blend. And blend until it is to your desired puree-ness. Add more salt until desired salty-ness and liquid to desired thickness.

Once blended into a puree, I put it back into the cast iron skillet and kept on low to keep it warm until the pasta was warmed through from the oven. All the dill I added made the puree turn into a more yellowish color.

The Meal:

Once everything was prepared, we added our favorite mix of olives, some crusty french bread with olive oil and balsamic dipping sauce and our glasses of Torrontes. Chris said that the finishing touch would have been a sprig of dill carefully placed in each bowl of pasta and carrot puree, but alas I took this photo before he had suggested it! So be sure to add a sprig of dill to your carrot puree!

Enjoy!