Roots n beans

Keeping it really simple with this one - roasted roots with honey, orange zest and rosemary, tossed with a few cherry tomatoes and butter beans. It was delicious and filling, sweet and creamy, and very orange!

Simply roast the root veggies for about half an hour to 40 minutes, drizzled with olive oil, a bit of honey, some orange zest and some rosemary. For the last 5 minutes of cooking, add the drained beans and some halved cherry tomatoes. Serve with extra olive oil, a dusting of chilli flakes and a blob of creme fraiche for extra creaminess.

Fruity nutty carrot muffins

The other night, I really wanted to try out making some carrot and apple cake, but I’d run out of apples. Hmm. Instead, I decided to mix lots of things together that I like into some muffins, and the result was pretty good. They’re really moist (I added ground almonds in place of some of the flour), a beautiful orange colour and I think do the carrots justice. They’re not as dense as some carrot cakes that are around, either. I didn’t use any frosting but I’m sure they’d be great with some mascarpone with orange zest on top. I’ll also get around to trying the apple and carrot version one day!

Makes 8 muffins
125g butter at room temperature
125g light brown soft sugar
100g plain flour
30g ground almonds
1 tsp cinnamon
1 ½ tsp baking powder
50g dried fruits – I used a mixture of raisins and sultanas (really big ones)
A handful of almonds
A couple of handfuls of walnuts
Zest of one orange
A tablespoon or two of the juice from said orange
1 egg
About 150g carrot (or mixture of carrot and apple), grated

Preheat the oven to 170 (fan) and line a couple of tins with muffin cases.

Cream together the butter, sugar and zest until it’s light and there are no grainy sugar bits left. I like to add the zest in at this stage because I think the beating brings out the lovely orangey-ness. Add the egg and beat again.

Chop the nuts roughly (don’t leave any really big bits but I quite like mine to be relatively chunky) and add these and the fruits into the flour, cinnamon, ground almonds and baking powder. Mix these dry ingredients into the butter, sugar and eggs gradually. You don’t need to worry too much about being very careful as it’s quite a heavy cake mix.

Then add the grated carrot and mix well to ensure it’s all evenly distributed. Depending on how juicy your carrots are, you might want to add a bit of orange juice in at this point.

Divide the mixture between the cases – they will rise a bit, so don’t fill them too full – and bake for between 25-30 mins.

Note: depending on the juiceiness of your carrots, you might need to add a bit of milk to your cake batter. Just play it by ear and make sure it's thin enough that it falls off the wooden spoon!

Crushed roasted carrots with pine nuts, raisins and goats cheese

This was really nice for lunch served with warm, crusty wholemeal bread. Serves 1 but you could scale up for more, or serve with other salads and bread. Might also be nice sprinkled with some flat leaf parsely (I didn't have any.)



2 carrots
handful pine nuts (toasted in a dry frying pan)
a few raisins
tsp or so cumin seeds
juice of a small orange (I squashed a Clementine and ate the rest)
about a tsp clear honey
a few blobs of nice soft, mild goats cheese

to start I scrubbed and chopped the carrots – I cut them down the middle lengthways and in half. Then seasoned and roasted them in a bit of olive oil for about 50 mins or so at 170 degrees C.

the dressing is pretty easy. I toasted the cumin seeds then crushed them. I mixed the honey and the orange juice, and added the raisins to soak in there to plump them up a bit while the carrots were roasting. I added the olive oil that the carrots had been roasting in to this at the end, and plenty of black pepper.

When the carrots were done I squashed them lightly with a fork, and poured the dressing over. Then sprinkled with the pine nuts and added a bit of goats cheese. Yum!