Palms and the Rain

A few weeks back we had a day where a 6-months quota of rain fell in a day (a night and a day really). It was a mess around here. The whole lower zone below the highway was closed off due to the flooding; I couldn’t get out of the house for all the water in the streets. We’ve recovered now and the damage was not completely out of hand.

What happen though was that some spots got good solid pools of water on them for hours at a time and the ground sucked it all up. Consequently there was mud everywhere, up to 10-15 cm in some spots [4-6”]. What surprised me was that some supposedly dead and blasted, worthless, palm trunks suddenly started sprouting new tops. These two had been looking dry and dead for years. Now there is hope. Goes to show how important water is.

Then 5 days later the smaller one already looked like this (night time shot):

Creamed Carrots: Crema de Zanahoria

Another easy one; to make with stuff from the veggie bin in the fridge.

I like mine on the thick side. You may make it more soupy.

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Crema de Zanahoria : Creamed Carrots

Serves: 5

Ingredients

• 700 gr carrots, peeled & chopped [1 1/2 #]
• 1 onion, diced (maybe a shallot or 2 if you’ve got some)
• 2 leeks, white part, chopped fine (or 1, or 3, or none)
• olive oil
• 1/2 t cumin
• salt
• pepper
• 1/2 C dry white wine (I used cava)
• 1 C cream
• 1/2 C milk
• 1/2 C carrot water

Procedure

1. Oil into a sauté pan
2. Sauté the onions and leeks slowly, not browning
3. Meanwhile, boil the carrots in water just barely not covering
   • Until they’re 1/2 cooked, just getting softer
   • Reserve the carrot-water when draining the carrots
4. Carrots go into the pan with the onions and sauté lightly until tender
• Add a tablespoon of carrot-water if things threaten to get burnt/toasty
5. Set carrots and onion etc aside
6. Deglaze the sauté pan with white wine, reduce by 1/2 or 2/3rds
7. Put carrots, onions, leeks, & pan juices into a container and run the whole mess through a vegetable mill, or use a stick blender or a mixer of some sort
• Get it as fine as can be. Add some carrot-water if it’s too thick to process properly.
8. Put this goop into a pot on the stove and add the cream
9. Heat and stir – do not boil
10. Add 3 T olive oil, stir
11. Season with the cumin, add salt and pepper
    • Taste it before continuing
12. Add the milk – watch out for the thickness
13. As required, add carrot-water to obtain a syrupy consistency
14. Heat and stir – and taste
15. When you feel it’s about right that means that you’re done

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