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Dinner last night was exactly what I needed to get me back here. It was good. No, really f*ing good. Other things I have been making lately have been fine, meh, okay, but not enough to inspire me to download the pictures and write about them.
But then this smoky carrot puree comes and blows me out of the water.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we went to dinner with friends at Nopa (consistently some of the best meals – highly recommended to those visiting SF) and I haven’t been able to get one of the starters out of my head.
It was grilled sardines on toast with a carrot hummus. Out of this world. The carrot when combined with the sardines gave it an almost uni-like quality. Ah-mazing.
And then my friend Kimberley posted a smoky carrot hummus on her blog a few days later. Obviously carrots have been stalking me.
I finely decided to give in and try out my own version, and now I am wondering why I waited so long.
Combined with a combination of spices that were subtly sweet, spicy and smoky these carrots became things of dreams. And topped with a quick pan-roasted hake (quite possibly my new favorite fish — it has large flakes and is mild and a barely sweet, similar to black cod), it became the best dinner we could remember having.
So good, it even held up to its original inspiration.
As a quick aside, this puree is also great cold as a dip. I may or may not be munching on the leftovers with sesame rice crackers while typing this. No, I would never resort to snacking between breakfast and lunch.
Smoked Carrot Puree
Boy – I have really made this linger. I didn’t mean to, I promise, but sometimes that’s just what happens, ya know?
When we first started thinking about the dinner, I knew that we wanted to have a menu that was super simple. Things that required little to no cooking so we could really just enjoy being up at the lake for the weekend and not spending the whole day in the kitchen. Even so, dinner for 20, no matter how simple, takes at least a bit of time.
Thankfully we have awesome friends (who are great in the kitchen & out) and everything came together by committee.
What I was undoubtedly most excited for were the tomatoes. I had seen a few fun posts on Style Notes focusing on summer tomatoes (a tomato tasting from Martha Stewart and a tomato bar during cocktail hour at a wedding) and knew right away lots of heirlooms would be key for a low-stress summer dinner.
I thought it would be fun to highlight the different varieties will a plethora of salts and oils. Sometimes cool salts can be pricy, but when purchased in bulk (and without fancy-schmancy packaging) you can get some great finds at even better prices. We loaded all the salts (plus local crushed chiles and freshly cracked black pepper) in the little dishes from Chinatown and set them out in little grouping among the table for everyone to sample.
We had:
