Carrot and fresh goat´s cheese pie

Carrot and goat´s cheese pie

I took a trip to the farmers´market to get my next dosage of carrots.  The farmer with the Egyptian pyramid hat has such sweet carrtos, even though they are stored over winter they are addictively fresh and crunchy even at the end of March. The decision of a carrot pie with goat´s cheese was taken when the young cheese maker handed me the piece of fresh goat´s cheese. I had been eyeing that cheese for a few times thinking what to pair it with. Some stronger and saltier cheese and herbs de Provance type of flavours would do the trick...with some darker flour.

Ingredients for the pie filling

Ingredients:
15g fresh yeast
1 tsp sugar
a pinch of salt
1 dl warm milk
1 dl warm water
0.5 dl rape seed oil
150g dark wheat flour ("Ruchmehl" in Switzerland)
80g whole wheat flour 

Filling:
400g boiled carrot, crushed
200g fresh goat´s cheese
50g hard cheese like Grana Padano or Parmesan, grated
black pepper from the mill
thyme leaves

0.5 egg, beaten

Mix the yeast with sugar and salt until liquid, then add the water, milk, oil and flours and combine. Cover the dough with kitchen towels and leave the dough to raise for about one hour.

Boil the carrots in salt water, cool down, remove the peel and crush with a fork. I like a rustic slightly coarser bite. For a smooth filling crushing the carrots in a food processor will do the job.

Heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius
Cut the goat´s cheese into small pieces, and together with the grated hard cheese, pepper and thyme add to the carrots. Taste for salt.

The filling spread on the dough

Spread the dough on a flour dusted table or counter and place the carrot mix on the dough. Roll lengthwise together. Cover the baking tray with baking paper and place the pie on the tray. Brush the pie with the egg mixture and bake in the oven for 30 min.

Carrot pie with thyme, and two cheeses

Serve the pie warm or cold with tea or milk

For more try also  Carrot pie with chunky parmesan

Roasted Carrot and Chickpea Hummus

Roasted carrot and chickpea hummus

 I happened to see an interview with a popular Estonian writer and a respected thought leader Mihkel Mutt. Shooting many thought pearls from his sharp cannon he was talking about why we should read and re-read the classics.
If we only read whatever new comes along there is a risk that people will adopt bad as acceptable, acceptable as mediocre, mediocre as good and good as genius. The classics help us to re-calibrate the important criteria in life.

I was thinking about this all day and while the tought was inspiring to always aspire perfection it rang a bell in a culinary sense as well. The classic recipes are classic, because they are good and are treasured by millions of mouths because the classics make them happy. The classic cooking methods are classic again because they have worked for long and will continue to attract new generations.

Adopting eating habits that lead to diabetes in early ages as acceptable, aisles of packaged ready-made food as satisfactory, fast food as good nutrition and a plate of take away "pasta bolognese" as genius is crying out for an occasional visit to a real quality restaurant or Mom´s kitchen or foodie friends to re-calibrate the main criteria.

Roasted Carrot and Chickpea Hummus
Ingredients:
200g carrots, cut into 1-2cm pieces
2-3 tbsp cooking oil
salt
cumin powder

1 can chickpeas
2 tbsp tahini paste
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 tbsp olive oil
juice of half a lemon
3 tbsp cold water
1/2 tsp salt
pepper
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1/2 tsp coriander powder

Add more colour to pale hummus with roasted carrots

Heat the oven to 200 C, place the carrots into a baking tray, sprinkle with oil, a pinch of salt and a pinch of cumin powder and roast the carrots until soft, ca. 30-40 minutes. Cool them down.

In a food processor mix the roasted carrots. Add chickpeas, tahini paste, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, water, salt, pepper, cumin and coriander powders. Mix until smooth and well combined.

Drizzle olive oil and sprinkle some more cumin powder and serve with crisps, tortilla chips or thin roasted bread slices.

A more northern taste of classic hummus, with roasted carrots

Carrot soup with courgette and salmon

Carrot soup with courgette (zucchini) and salmon

It finally hit my brain when I was walking around the farmers´market that the summer is gone. All signs were there: quince had appeared on some counters, the choice of tomatoes had more than halved, winter cabbages like cavalo negro and kale were on sale, at one stand I heard the saleswoman explain to a puzzled customer that "the season for basil is over"....How did it happen that the basil season totally passed this year before I had stocked up with fresh pesto? Oh well, the supermarket sells basil all year round and that will get me through winter ...probably at the cost of a higher carbon footprint.

Quince, an autumn and winter fruit

The shoppers were trying to fit under the roofs of the stands with their umbrellas and apologising to the other dripping customers. It was pouring for hours and the amount of daylight stayed below 5 on a scale of 10 the whole day.  I was looking forward to a lazy afternoon in front of the telly and the 5-DVD set of a Danish thriller I borrowed from my friend last weekend.

Kale, only available in autumn and winter at the market

At that dismal, sort of Wagnerian Melancholia market I was thinking Soup! Something bright and orange. I had bought 2 kilos of bio carrots at a good deal earlier in the week. Perfect starting point for my new favourite soup of this autumn. A bowl of carrot soup with courgette and salmon is a low fat but belly filling option for lunch or supper for the days when you just wish for a soup that you can bite into. I am a great fan of smooth cream soups, but equally on other days the soup just needs to be a bit more solid.

And a little fat must be. I am glad that fat helps me to get the vitamin A out of the carrots into my body but more importantly the small golden shiny bubbles that glisten on the surface act like a promise of a great meal and produce zillion of happy hormones before I have even taken a bite. The soup is ready in about half an hour. I can manage that after a long working day and still have a freshly made great tasing meal.

Carrot Soup with courgette (zucchini) and salmon
Ingredients for 2

500g carrots, cut into cubes
0.5l stock (or water + 1 cube bouillon)
1 whole yellow peperoncini or a chilli pod
0.5 tsp fresh ginger, grated
1 medium courgette, cut into cubes
250g fresh salmon, cut in 2 cm cubes
2-3 tbsp fresh cream

Bring the water to boil, add the bouillon, carrots, peperoncini and grated ginger. Cook on medium heat until the carrots are soft. Take a few table spoons of carrots out and put aside for later. Remove the peperoncini. Purée the carrots. Taste for salt and spice. Add the courgette cubes and cook for a couple of minutes. Then add the salmon and cream. Continue cooking on low -medium heat for a few minutes. Be careful not to cook too long as the salmon will become chewy and courgette too soft.

If you don´t have fresh fish, try frozen white fish filet. Cut into cubes and add to the carrot purée before the courgette but still be caucious not to over cook the fish. Adding the frozen fish would cool down the soup, so bringing it to boil and then adding the courgette for a few minutes more on the heat would be about right.

Carrot-courgette & fresh salmon soup

Related posts:
Caldo Verde, an autumn soup
Buying carrots

Plastic Around Carrots: Are You Buying Carrots or Plastic?

 

Carrots are wonderful vegetables. I use a lot of carrots in soups or as vegetable side dishes. Since I don’t have a garden I get my carrots from the farmers or supermarket. I like to select carrots and buy the ones I like. Depending on the dish I may choose narrower or thicker ones. The narrower I find sweeter and crunchier for eating raw, the thicker ones are easier to grate or more convenient to chop for soups or good in stews.

Daucas Carota (Lat), Carrots (Eng), Möhre, Karotte (Ger), Rüebli (Swiss Ger), Porgand (Est)

In the supermarket the only option is to use the plastic bag offered. In order to reduce the amount of bags and consequently the costly garbage at home I use one bag for all the vegetables and fruits I buy instead of a separate bag for each. And I often reuse the bag at home for something else.

So yesterday in a supermarket I chose my carrots and wondered around the vegetable section for a while. I found there were 4 different possibilities to buy fresh carrots.

1. Select your own and weigh them yourself. Price per kg 1.60.
2. 1 kg packaged in a plastic bag. Price per kg 1.60.
3. A value line 2.5 kg packaged in a plastic bag. Price per kg 0.84.
4. 4 carrots packed on a plastic tray wrapped in plastic. Price per kg 1.90.

Carrots in the value pack on the left, packed in double plastic on the right

Voilà! Number 4 was not explicitly marked as a bio-organic product that would perhaps justify a higher price. Apparently there is demand for carrots packed on a plastic tray and people are willing to pay more for it. In fact, I would just be paying more, once for the tray and second time for creating more garbage. Every bag of garbage you generate costs in Switzerland.Personally, I find no use for that tray at home to give it “a second life” in some other use to justify its existence even if the price was the same as for the loose carrots. 

I use one bag for all the veg and fruit I buy and reuse the bag

Yes, I have considered the point of hygiene as well before writing this, but did not find a convincing point. I see people eating fruit and vegetable bought in supermarket without washing them first. So they are not really bothered about this at all. When I buy the carrots selecting them from a crate myself, yes, someone else may have touched them, but I will wash and typically peel the carrots at home, so no issue there.

Please help reduce meaningless plastic!

Carrot Pie with Chunky Parmesan

It is weekend and more time again for kitchen experiments. I feel I need something without meat or even fish. The whole week I have wanted something in the lines of a cake, a pie or something else baked but have resisted the temptation. A veggi pie today perhaps? So I hit the market.

It is June and the counters at the Farmers Market have made space for piles of orange fresh new carrots. These thin sweet roots are “knackig” (Ger.), crisp and juicy and best enjoyed raw. Somehow I suspect that the bigger thicker carrots further away that are not sold in a bunch and don’t have the green leaves but are equally bright orange, hard and clean of soil are from the last harvest. I am really embarrassed that I am doubting this…I should know this. My logic of the agricultural calendar says they must be from last year’s harvest but as a consumer it can be confusing as they look the same all year round. Old or new crop today is carrot time.

I’ve grown up with carrots. Carrots grow in the northern latitudes and are a common vegetable, besides potatoes of course, in Estonia. My Mom used to make carrot pies and my aunt, who had a real stove with an oven that was heated by wood, used to make small carrot pies that were juicy soft and looked like small shiny golden brown pouches. We call them pies, picture them as empanadas filled with carrot and egg and sometimes some bacon.

I buy my carrots, Italian flat parsley – onions I have at home – for the pie and some strawberries for dessert. I see some big free range eggs and get half a dozen. Somehow I’ve always thought that the eggs at the market are more expensive, but no. So I’m thinking that from now on, I will take my egg business to the market.

I made the pie dough with my sister’s recipe:

100g hard butter from the fridge

2.5dl or 250ml flour (white or wholegrain)

Salt (two pinch)

1 egg yolk

1 tablespoon cold water

Chop the cold butter in the flour and salt mix into small pieces. A two pinch salt = a pinch between two fingers. Add the egg yolk and 1tbl spoon water. Mix all into a dough, wrap into the plastic foil and leave in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Carrot pie filling:

500-600g carrots

3 medium-small onions

3-4 tablespoons olive oil

150g parmesan

3 eggs + egg white left-over from the dough

75ml milk

Thyme

Curcuma

Flat parsley, a good handful, chopped

Salt and pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees Celcius.

Clean and chop the onion rather finely but the fineness and equal piece size is not important at all. Peel the carrots and grate with the rough side. Very thinly grated carrot will lose the bite.

Heat the oil in a pan and fry the onion slightly. Add the grated carrots to the onion and cook for about 5 minutes till carrots are softer. Add some salt and pepper, chopped thyme, curcuma (about a three pinch) and as last the parsley. Taste for salt as the carrots have a natural sweet taste.

Chop the parmesan into small chunks. In this recipe I replaced the usually grated cheese with chunks of Parmesan to give the filling a crunchier texture.

Mix the eggs, add the milk and some salt.

Roll the dough into a thin layer and fit into a 24-26 cm diameter baking form that is fitted with baking paper to avoid sticking to the bottom and sides.

Layer on the dough half the carrot mix, half the chopped parmesan, then carrots again and on top parmesan chunks. Pour the egg-milk mixture on the carrots.

Cook in the oven for 30 minutes or until the filling is cooked and the cheese on top is turning golden brown.

Mouth-watering Carrot Pie with Parmesan Cheese

Enjoy warm or cold.

I was showing the pie on the Skype and the mouths were salivating on both sides of the camera in Estonia and in Switzerland. :-)