Alice Waters' Colorful Carrots with Butter and Honey

This week's guest editor is Alice Waters, the visionary behind Chez Panisse and The Edible Schoolyard Project. All week, she'll be sharing recipes from her latest cookbook, The Art of Simple Food II, answering our questions, and inspiring us to get a little dirt on our sleeves. 

Today: Alice Waters shares a recipe for Colorful Carrots with Butter and Honey, which she recently stopped by our office to cook with us. (It was fun.) Read on for her carrot-cooking tips, and enter to win your own copy of The Art of Simple Food II!

This is a simple recipe, and like all simple recipes, it requires the best ingredients. Most important of all are the carrots. Choose young carrots, vibrantly fresh and alive, in as many colors as possible -- red, orange, yellow, and purple. I often peel mine if they're a bit hairy, or they seem old; but tiny, young carrots can be cooked as they are.

Colorful Carrots with Butter and Honey

Carrots (2 to 4 per person)
Butter, one knob per person
Honey, a small spoonful

Cut off the greens of the carrots, leaving a half inch of stem; peel the carrots lightly, and wash them well.

Cut the large ones in half lengthwise, but leave small ones whole. Put a pan with 1/2 inch of water in it over high heat.

Add the carrots, a small knob of butter per person, and salt to taste.

Cover the pan and cook until the carrots are just tender.

  
Fun fact: Purple carrots make for purple water! 

Remove the lid, lower the heat, add a small spoonful of honey, and cook until the water is mostly gone and the carrots are gilded with a shiny glaze of butter and honey. (You can also remove the carrots, and cook down the liquid until it thickens, as we did here.)

Remove from the pan and serve right away.

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.

Were giving away a copy of The Art of Simple Food II! To enter, tell us in the comments: What's your favorite way to prepare carrots? We'll choose a winner at random this Friday, November 22 -- unfortunately, we can't ship outside the US.

Photo by James Ransom