Corsu Vecchiu with Spiced Carrot Salad

I've been powering through these cheese courses because they're easy, and honestly, because I love cheese. Who doesn't? This dish marks the 5th out of 10 cheese dishes in the French Laundry cookbook, and I'm getting a little melancholy. I'm going to have to hold off on doing the rest of them right away so I can intersperse them throughout the rest of this project.

The Corsu Vecchiu with Spiced Carrot Salad was lovely, easy, and eerily reminiscent of a carrot-raisin salad my mother used to make. I will say that I don't like raisins -- never have -- and I've never been a big fan of carrots and raisins together. But, add in some CHEESE and I'm a happy camper. Everything's better with cheese. As long as it's good cheese, that is. And the Corsu Vecchiu that I got at Arrowine was delicious. Nutty, a little stinky, creamy, and with just enough heft to balance the carrot and raisin sweetness.

Let's get started on this dish. The first thing I did was make some carrot powder, which involved shredding carrots and letting them dry out on parchment paper in a 200-degree oven for about 4 hours. Here's what the dried carrots looked like right before they were ground into powder:



You can see the finished powder in the final photo in this entry, but don't skip ahead because you'll miss all the juicy parts of the story. (I am such a bad liar.)

The next thing I did was make a spice powder for the carrot reduction. Here's the mise en place for the spice powder:



I warmed the spices in a small sauté pan:



Then, ground them into a fine powder in a coffee bean grinder, and stored it in an airtight container:



Okay -- powders done and the house didn't burn down. I am officially awesome.

Here's the mise en place for the rest of the dish:



First, I strained the carrot juice into a small saucepan, brought it to a boil, skimmed off the scum, and let it reduce for about 15-20 minutes. When it had reduced to about 2T, I added a pinch of the spice powder, removed it from the heat, and let it sit on the stovetop until I was ready to use it in the carrot mixture.

Next, I put the raisins into separate saucepan, covered them with water and the fresh-squeezed lemon juice and let them simmer for a few minutes until they started to get plump:



When they were done plumping, I puréed the raisins with a little bit of the cooking liquid, and then strained the purée. I set it aside to work on the carrots. I shredded the carrots in the food processor and added the brunoise to them. I didn't rephotograph the brunoise prep because you can find that here. It turned out better this time, so I kinda wish I'd shot it, but you get the general idea.

I mixed the carrots with the brunoise in a small mixing bowl, and then poured in the carrot juice reduction:



Next up? The cheese. All hail Corsu Vecchiu:



Plating was easy: a tablespoon of the raisin purée topped with the shredded carrot salad. On top of that, fanned out slices of Corsu Vecchiu, topped with a spring of chervil. And, do ya see what's on the side? Oh yes, my friends. That would be carrot powder. It had a much nicer consistency than the tomato powder from the Haricots Verts. Here's the final dish:



Would I make this again? Probably not. It wasn't bad or difficult, it just wasn't amazing enough to warrant a repeat performance.

Up Next: Lemon Sabayon-Pine Nut Tart with Honeyed Mascarpone Cream.

Brands Used:
Corsu Vecchiu cheese from Arrowine
Produce, herbs and spices from Takoma Park-Silver Spring Co-op
Odwalla carrot juice
Pavich organic golden raisins
All-Clad cookware
Cuisinart food processor
Hamilton Beach blender

Music to Cook By: We Get There When We Do; Suddenly Tammy