Using up Halloween veg!
Some of you will have seen this creepy picture which I made to send seasonal shivers up the spines of Gackt Army members:
Well, all the veg was real so I had pumpkins and black carrots to use...
Here is the veg as I used it for the Halloween picture:
Several people asked me what the black carrots tasted like and whether they were black or orange inside. At the time of taking the photos, I didn't know. I knew that carrots come in a range of colours, from white through yellow and orange and red and purple to black, but - I'd never eaten a carrot that wasn't orange before!
So, what colour are they inside? Take a potato peeler in one hand and shave off a strip of skin -
Yep, it's black inside! Actually, the colour is slightly purple, like a beetroot. Here is the same carrot split in half so that you can see the colour variation: the flesh pales towards the woody core
I tried eating a piece with my eyes closed and the taste was - just like orange carrot.
What isn't like orange carrot is the staining with marks anything it touches - like fingertips
The other picture there is a side-salad made with weirdly colour tomatoes: they are black-green-red striped. This was a weird veg dinner alright!
Having tested the black carrot taste, I chopped it up small and mixed it with finely sliced garlic. I then fried this mixture in some sunflower oil and added sushi-type round rice, tamari and a re-hydrated Japanese seaweed called hijiki ヒジキ, 鹿尾菜 which I learned to like in Japan as part of a hangover preventative cum snack (ochazuke) served in sake bars!
There were also the pumpkins to use. The pumpkin flesh got fried with white onion, shitake mushroom and smoked tofu. At the end, I added sesame oil, a drop of chilli oil and some cooked asparagus. The grain (rice) and pulse/bean (tofu) makes a complete protein so this combination is quite satisfying to the appetite. The two dishes looked like this:
Apologies for the half-eaten appearance - I couldn't hold the guests off feeding with the feeble excuse of a photoshoot!
I'd also made some fresh popcorn with good olive oil which, afterwards, we took to the local cinema (only sells the sugary stuff itself) for a viewing of Tintin. The Tintin story had pirates and I had trouble keeping "The Black Carrot" out of my mind as the name for a pirate ship!
Hope you've enjoyed this extended Halloween curiosity.
Well, all the veg was real so I had pumpkins and black carrots to use...
Here is the veg as I used it for the Halloween picture:
Several people asked me what the black carrots tasted like and whether they were black or orange inside. At the time of taking the photos, I didn't know. I knew that carrots come in a range of colours, from white through yellow and orange and red and purple to black, but - I'd never eaten a carrot that wasn't orange before!
So, what colour are they inside? Take a potato peeler in one hand and shave off a strip of skin -
Yep, it's black inside! Actually, the colour is slightly purple, like a beetroot. Here is the same carrot split in half so that you can see the colour variation: the flesh pales towards the woody core
I tried eating a piece with my eyes closed and the taste was - just like orange carrot.
What isn't like orange carrot is the staining with marks anything it touches - like fingertips
The other picture there is a side-salad made with weirdly colour tomatoes: they are black-green-red striped. This was a weird veg dinner alright!
Having tested the black carrot taste, I chopped it up small and mixed it with finely sliced garlic. I then fried this mixture in some sunflower oil and added sushi-type round rice, tamari and a re-hydrated Japanese seaweed called hijiki ヒジキ, 鹿尾菜 which I learned to like in Japan as part of a hangover preventative cum snack (ochazuke) served in sake bars!
There were also the pumpkins to use. The pumpkin flesh got fried with white onion, shitake mushroom and smoked tofu. At the end, I added sesame oil, a drop of chilli oil and some cooked asparagus. The grain (rice) and pulse/bean (tofu) makes a complete protein so this combination is quite satisfying to the appetite. The two dishes looked like this:
Apologies for the half-eaten appearance - I couldn't hold the guests off feeding with the feeble excuse of a photoshoot!
I'd also made some fresh popcorn with good olive oil which, afterwards, we took to the local cinema (only sells the sugary stuff itself) for a viewing of Tintin. The Tintin story had pirates and I had trouble keeping "The Black Carrot" out of my mind as the name for a pirate ship!
Hope you've enjoyed this extended Halloween curiosity.