Back to Basics

I was staring at a huge bag of carrots, wondering what the heck to do with them. I have to use them before I jet off to California or it's off to the compost heap with them. It occurred to me to put some of that fancy culinary schoolin' to use and cook them en glace.

As I discussed in an earlier post, using the French culinary terms always makes a cooking tecnhique sound more involved than it is. We learned three basic ways to cook vegatables at the French Culinary Institute, l'Americane, l'etuve, and en glace. L'Americaine is the basic put the vegtables in salted, boiling water then shock in an ice bath. L'etuve you put the veg in a pan then partially cover with water, add salt and butter, cover with a parchment paper cover and cook until the water is evaporated. Au glace is similar to l'etuve, but sugar is added to create a sweet coating on the vegtables.

I quickly diced up a few carrots, did my kitchen origami partchment paper lid, chucked the carrots in a sauteuse with some water, butter, salt and sugar and cranked up the heat. Once the water was boling I lowered the heat to a simmer and waited for the water to evaporate. Once the water was gone, I removed the lid and let the remaining butter and sugar form a glaze on the carrots.

The final dish was a winner. The carrots were cooked through with a nice sweet coating on them. A little vanilla or some orange liqueur would have been welcome additions to this. Maybe next time, as in tonight. I still have a lot of carrots left.