Carrots fit for a hotel lobby!

Carrotes A La Concierge - Creamed Carrots With Onions and Garlic

I thought a concierge was that guy who gives great recommendations and advice down in the hotel lobby? "Carrotes A La Concierge" apparently have nothing to do with a hotel but they did make an awesome side dish with our dinner -- Casserole of Creamed Carrots with Onions and Garlic. They were tasty, creamy, and had a lot of flavor. On top of that, they were fun to make since they involved a lot of knife skills!

I ended up doubling the recipe so three pounds of carrots and five cups of sliced onions were used. I'm still not a ninja with my knife but I got these chopped up with a pretty respectable speed (okay, I did have a little help from Elizabeth and Kathryn but just a little and I was clearly much faster at chopping than them...just don't ask her to verify). At the end of the prepping I still could count to ten and had all of my fingertips still attached.

Hard as it is to believe, Julia didn't use any butter in this recipe either! Is it actually French? The carrots and onions ended up cooking in olive oil in a covered pan for about 30 minutes and then some garlic was added. After that boiling beef broth and boiling milk were added along with some basic spices (salt, pepper, and nutmeg). These all simmered together for another 20 minutes while the liquid reduced to about a third of what it started with.

Did anyone notice what I did there? I said "reduced!" That's a cooking word that chef's use instead of saying "boil off some of the liquid." Yep, I'm making progress.

After that, a half cup of cream was added and mixed in. Julia called for four egg yolks to be mixed in as well but I left them out because of Elizabeth's egg allergy. Didn't seem to take away much because there weren't many leftovers. Finally, some chopped parsley was stirred in to add color (And a bit of flavor? I'm not sure that anyone can ever actually taste parsley.). I hope Julia will forgive me -- I did not have any fresh parsley on hand so I used dried parsley flakes and they seemed to work just fine.

This was a really nice side dish. Not to rich but quite tasty. It must not have been too bad because in spite of a lot of carrots, there wasn't much leftover. Hmmmmm, I'm going to need to quit inviting company over to eat these things. A lot of people are a good thing when it doesn't turn out well since the damage is shared. When it ends up being good, though, the leftovers are limited. Well, that's a good problem. Having family and friends around to share a good meal is a big part of the reason we try cooking fun things and not limit ourselves to frozen burritos.

I hope this is one you'll have a chance to try sometime. Let me know if you're in the area, maybe you can join us for dinner!

Bon Appetit!