Vegetables are often an afterthought, cast as a bit player, a side-dish on the culinary stage. Most of us pluck and choose the most tender parts of the vegetable, tossing the rest aside. For us, this becomes a challenge! How to use the entire vegetable – and make it the star of the show?

Take for example, the humble carrot. It’s been around for millennia, a wild plant originating in Persia where it was cultivated for its aromatic leaves and seeds. Daucus carota seeds show up in archeological sites in Germany and Switzerland as far back as 2000 BC. That’s quite a legacy.

When thinking about the carrot and its pedestrian standing in the vegetable world, we decided to pay tribute to its humble roots. We shed the soft exterior skin and made the carrot’s core the pèice de résistance. We rescued it from the fringes and made it one of the main touchstones on our tasting menu. We used every last bit and let nothing go to waste. In other words – we took it upon ourselves to cook the perfect carrot!

Similar to our ancestors thousands of years ago, we dug a pit in the earth and started a fire. Once the flames receded and the smoke cleared, we sliced the outer layer of the carrot, placed it gracefully on the hot charcoal and covered the pit with soil.

During 6 to 8 hours of patient anticipation, the carrot cooks through perfectly while imbuing an intense smoky aroma similar to that of bacon.

We create a hollandaise using fermented carrot juice from the leftover outer layer. Cured organic egg yolk from our farm’s eggs complete this refreshing and tangy sauce.

This is PRU’s contribution to the legacy of the humble carrot – elegant, rustic and pure.

~ PRU Culinary Team