Pureed Carrots, But Not For Babies
A few key ingredients transform the dish
As part of a drawn-out sequence of birthday treats, mostly for Jackie but for me, too, we recently spent a few days in the southwest French spa town of Eugénie-les-Bains. Truth to tell, we weren’t there to take the waters — these are sulfurous and a taste we have no wish to acquire — but to eat in the restaurant of Michel Guérard.
Guérard, vigorous and hard-working at 86, won his third Michelin star 42 years ago and has kept it ever since. (There are a couple of restaurants in France that have held three stars longer, but these are no longer operated by their founding chefs.)
The surroundings are dreamy and the food is full of fresh ideas, precise cooking, impeccable products, and vivid flavors. That also goes for the spa cuisine (Guérard’s famous cuisine minceur, often wrongly conflated with the broader nouvelle cuisine movement of which he was a part in the 1970s, which was more about liberation from the rigid French hotel-school canon than about weight loss). There, those vivid flavors, alluring aromas, and great ingredients mask the meager calorie count: Our one low-cal dinner added up to 455 calories for three courses, or would have had we not undermined the system by slipping in a visit by the cheese cart between our saffron-scented blanquette of monkfish and our mango mousse. Don’t worry: On our other three nights, we ate more than our share of foie gras.
As we left, Guérard gave us a copy of his most recent book, “Mots et Mets” — Words and Foods — published in 2017. It’s a miscellany prettily decorated with watercolors by Guillaume Trouillard, starting with a gastronomic alphabet book whose arch humor doesn’t always tickle the funny bone of a dour anglophone. The book ends with an interesting autobiography, illustrated by photographs, menus, and so forth. In between is the meat: a group of recipes, some new, some older but revisited. The one that leapt at me was for carrot purée. Don’t laugh; don’t pretend to yawn: The recipe had a couple of twists that I was pretty confident would obliterate any resemblance to the Gerber strained carrots I was given as a baby.
True, this starts out as a straightforward creamy purée, but there are canny enhancements — fresh mint and dried apricots — and a cooking technique that ensures bright, fresh flavor and smooth texture. The recipe, with some variation, has turned up in various French magazines and online, but unaccountably it appears never to have been given in English. It is delicious: buttery, creamy, and above all carroty, with a new aromatic dimension lent by the mint and points of tartness-sweetness from the tiny dice of dried apricots. It is also easy to make.
Don’t laugh; don’t pretend to yawn: The recipe had a couple of twists that I was pretty confident would obliterate any resemblance to the Gerber strained carrots I was given as a baby.
I’ve adapted the recipe in two ways: I’ve increased the quantity (the original yields a tiny portion; don’t ask me why) and adjusted proportions accordingly. And I’ve specified far more mint than the one sprig Guérard proposes: The herbs he uses — most strikingly his mint and his verbena — leave what we can buy at the farmers (or super-) market in the shade. In the restaurant, you can smell the herbs coming from yards away. Such joy!
Don’t balk at the long cooking time: Even after 25 minutes, the sliced carrots will not pale in flavor or color, and the food processor will make them into an ultra-smooth purée.
You can serve this with chicken or plainly cooked seafood (shrimp!), perhaps in a little bowl on the side since it is best eaten with a spoon and not too cruelly sullied by other flavors.
Michel Guérard’s Carrot Purée
Ingredients
1 1/4 to 1/2 pound of carrots, cut on the bias
2 1/2 ounces of butter
1/2 cup water
1/2 to 1/4 teaspoon salt
A handful of mint
4 dried apricots
2/3 cup heavy cream
Peel 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 pounds of flavorful carrots and cut them on the bias into 1/4-inch slices. Rinse and put into an 8-inch pan, ideally a straight-sided sauté pan or shallow casserole with a lid. Add about 2 1/2 ounces (5 tablespoons) butter and around 1/2 cup water and a little salt, say 1/2 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt or 1/4 teaspoon of fine salt; you will adjust this later.
Bring to a boil, stir to distribute the butter, lower the heat, and gently simmer for 15 minutes, covered. As the carrots are simmering, rinse a good handful of fresh mint, stems and all (the stems will make it easier to remove the mint later). Also, cut four dried apricots into small dice (about 1/8 inch). Choose apricots that are somewhat moist and pleasingly soft — the kind you’d eat as a snack, but not the ones that are sold reconstituted, which would lack the palpable chewiness you want. Don’t worry about the sulfur dioxide: it is almost unavoidable, and too often non-sulfured apricots are of inferior flavor and texture, and of murky color.
At the 15-minute mark, add the mint and make sure all the water has not boiled away; it will probably be fine, since the carrots will exude water of their own, but if necessary add a few tablespoons more. Continue to cook for five minutes, covered, then add 2/3 cup of heavy cream, bring it up to a boil and simmer, uncovered, for five minutes more.
Remove the mint using a fork or tongs — or chopsticks if you are adept at using them. Using a rubber spatula, transfer the carrot mixture to the bowl of a food processor and process until completely smooth; taste for salt. Now stir in the diced apricots (by hand, not by food processor: the little pieces must remain intact).
Serve tepid, or reheat if you prefer.
