Week 6 - Two+ Ways

I was really excited when I saw the theme for Week 6 - two+ ways - and in flipping through the recipes in my folder, quickly stumbled upon 2 recipes that I thought would work perfectly for this challenge. Both involved carrots and yogurt, and I thought I would take it up another level by adding a third variation on top of those. We still had the majority of a giant bag of carrots from an old Costco trip, so it was going to be a very carrot-filled night.

The first variation, our "appetizer" course, was raw carrot sticks with a garlic yogurt dip. This was pretty easy, but didn't get served as early as I had hoped, mostly because washing and peeling at least 5 pounds of carrots takes a really, really long time. I figured it would be good to have an appetizer (in addition to the chocolate chip cookie dessert we had before/while prepping) since I had 13 steps on my cooking list for the night and I thought it might take a while since I'm slow in the kitchen. 

Once I finally had the carrots peeled (and the second variation of carrots in the oven, more on that later), I cut one large carrot into stick shapes, and then mixed together a dip made of a couple spoonfuls of plain Greek yogurt, 2 minced garlic cloves, and a few spritzes of lemon juice. I tried to plate the carrot sticks nicely with the dip and a couple of cilantro leaves, but it could have been more imaginative. This was good. A thought the dip could have used a little something else but wasn't sure what. I was okay with it since it was basically just garlic and yogurt, and that's all I need for a dip!

The second variation of carrots and yogurt for the night was roasted carrots with cumin yogurt, based on this recipe from Bon Appetit. I made some adjustments to the original recipe, some to account for ingredients we had and some to simplify since there was enough stuff to do for dinner that night. For example, they called for 3 pounds of Thumbelina or small carrots, but with that giant Costco bag of carrots, I wasn't about to go out and buy more carrots just to get small ones for the recipe. I also ditched toasting and grinding up the coriander and cumin seeds and just used our ground spices, because I really didn't have time to do otherwise.

Preparing the carrots for roasting was actually the very first thing I did in making dinner that night (after peeling the carrots), since roasting was the step that was going to take the longest. For the roasted carrots themselves, we needed:

- a few lbs of carrots, peeled and chopped (whatever size you like)

- orange juice, about 2 tbsp

- dried thyme, about 1 tbsp

- olive oil, a few tbsp

- 1 bay leaf

- salt and pepper

(All of these measurements are approximations. I didn't measure anything the whole night.)

I mixed together the orange juice, thyme, and olive oil, and then coated the carrots in that in a baking dish. After that, I added the bay leaf, salt, and pepper, and mixed it around some more. Then it was time to roast - about 50-60 minutes in a 450 degree oven, stirring once or twice during that time.

The dip for the roasted carrots was pretty simple (other than washing and prepping the cilantro, because the batch we got from the local grocery store was the dirtiest bunch of cilantro I had ever seen). For the dip, we needed:

- a few spoonfuls of plain Greek yogurt

- ground cumin, about 1 tbsp

- ground coriander, about 1 tbsp

- lime juice, about 1 tsp

- cilantro, finely chopped, a few tbsp

- olive oil, a few tbsp

To make the dip, you just mix all of those together well. I've made dips from a few different bases, but I haven't used Greek yogurt before. This 2% Greek yogurt from Trader Joe's was awesome for making dips. It was so creamy and smooth and so easy to use. I'm a complete convert now, and want to use this for all sorts of dips. In addition to being so wonderful texturally, it's healthier because it's yogurt!

The roasted carrots were good, but didn't taste like anything special - just roasted carrots with some thyme. The orange juice didn't come through very much at all, which was a little disappointing, since A lugged that home in a backpack in an exceptionally heavy haul from Trader Joe's and we would have skipped it if we knew it wasn't going to make much of a difference.  Sure, it's great that we now have orange juice for Vitamin C and immunity purposes in the middle of the winter, but we could have picked it up on another trip. The carrots were fine, but I think in the future I'll just stick to roasting them with olive oil and whatever spices we're in the mood for. The cumin yogurt was quite good. That would make a good dip generally.

The final variation of carrots and yogurt we had were carrot pancakes with salted yogurt, also from a Bon Appetit recipe. Again, we made some adaptations. In this case, it was to substitute for chickpea flour, and to eliminate the salad green component since our Trader Joe's has sadly been out of arugula for over a month or 2 now.

For our adaptation of the carrot pancakes, we used:

- grated carrot (from about a lb of carrots)

- cilantro, finely chopped, a few tsp

- 2 eggs, beaten

- Italian style bread crumbs, about 1/4-1/3 cup

- salt and pepper

I don't really know how much I used for the bread crumbs. I just kept adding in small amounts until I felt like it had thickened up the mixture a little bit (but only a little, the mixture should still be pretty loose). All of the ingredients get mixed together in a big bowl until it's time to make the pancakes.

I used a non-stick skillet for these pancakes (I learned my lesson from the bubble and squeak, remember?), coated it with a little bit of olive oil, and then put it over medium heat. Then I used a 1/2 cup sized scoop to pick up the carrot mixture and put it into the pan, flattening it a little bit into a patty shape. Our pan fit about 2 pancakes each time, for a total of 4 (with some extra small pieces from the remainder of the mixture). We cooked each pancake for a couple of minutes on each side until they had browned.

The dip was pretty simple - just a few spoonfuls of Greek yogurt with salt and pepper, all whipped together.

These carrot pancakes were wonderful, and they definitely did not need the salted yogurt with them. The flavor combination of sweet carrot, herbal cilantro, and the wonderfully seasoned Italian bread crumbs was perfect. I was definitely surprised when I tried the first bite about how much I liked them, and we both agreed that this was our favorite carrot part of dinner. (The cumin yogurt was our favorite yogurt part.) The pancakes were really so great on their own.

Overall, this carrot and yogurt experiment was a lot of fun, even if it was a lot of work and we had a late night dinner (again). We always roast vegetables like carrots, so that wasn't much of a revelation, but we definitely want to make these carrot pancakes again!