carrots

Carrots are brilliant – full of vitamins and extremely good for you. In the last year or so we’ve been lucky enough to have seen lots of different varieties of carrots available in the shops – long, round, peculiar-shaped, and even some purple ones. My favourite ways of cooking carrots all serve 4 people – for each recipe you will need 500g/1lb 2oz of carrots, either left whole if they are baby ones, or sliced into small erratic pieces – nothing too perfect.

carrots boiled with orange, garlic and herbs

Boil the carrots in salted boiling water with a tablespoon of sugar, a knob of butter and a little handful of fragrant herbs, tied up. Parsley, rosemary, thyme, bay – use just one or a mixture. Cut an orange into eighths and add them to the water, along with a few whole garlic cloves in their skins. If you really want to be a little tiger, add a pinch of cumin as well (seeds or ground) – it subtly cuts through with the most wonderful flavour. As soon as the carrots are cooked, drain them, discard the herbs and all but one of the orange pieces, squeeze the garlic out of its skin, chop the remaining orange piece finely and toss with the carrots, some seasoning and a little more butter. The flavour will be incredible.

Another idea is to fry the chopped-up orange in a good tablespoon of sugar, so it almost jammifies, and serve this on top of the carrots. These two flavours together are one of the coolest things.

roasted carrots with orange, garlic and thyme

Or – just as easy – as soon as you drain the carrots you can throw them into a baking tray with the chopped-up orange and the garlic cloves and roast them at 200°C/400°F/gas 6 for 10 minutes – this will give you a slightly meatier flavour.

mashed carrots

Or simply mash the carrots up with the orange and garlic, so you have some coarse and some smooth. Lovely.

• from Jamie’s Dinners