I’ve always felt sorry for carrots, that they were the underdog of the vegetable kingdom, always cheap, never fashionable. And yet these sturdy workhorses form the glorious basis to so many sauces, stocks and casseroles, imbuing everything with their earthy sweetness, and smart French chefs know to puree them and add them to the winey sauce of dishes like Beef Burgundy as a luscious sweet thickener.
Felt sorry for carrots, that is, until I saw them at Morrow’s farmers market stall. Fat, vibrantly orange, many multi-fingered and comically shaped, these are look-at-me carrots, positive show-offs – in fact, Stan Morrow weighs one monster for me and it’s nearly a kilo.
‘They’re nothing like supermarket carrots’, his nephew Rick tells me; later, when I crunch into one, I can only agree. These carrots have real flavour.
The Morrow farm, operating since the late 1800’s, continues to be run by the family, with Rick, his parents, sister and uncle Stan farming the 32 acres by themselves. It’s that gorgeous red soil, high up on the Alstonville plateau, minimal chemical intervention, crops like strawberries flourishing. In fact the strawberries had sold out by the time I hit the stall, although Rick finds me some squirreled away and I bite into the sweet red heart. Wonderful. He and Stan are up at 2am on market days – they also do the Lismore markets – preparing for the day. Sweet potatoes, vibrant green silverbeet, potatoes, big bulgy avocadoes and of course those carrots. I’m making a Carrot and White Chocolate Tart, the carrots roasted in butter and vanilla till tender, whizzed together with brown sugar, eggs, sour cream and white chocolate then poured into a biscuit base of ground Gingernut biscuits, baked long and slow until set. Carrots the hero. (Recipe on the website)
Morrow’s Farm can be found at the Mullumbimby Farmers Market every Friday from 7 – 11am
.
