Today’s lunch:

Recipe here: Anise Pork Sandwich With Carrots And Cilantro.

Inspired by the June issue of Gourmet, I’ve been on a spice paste spree for the past week. I tried chicken breasts with a North African spice paste recipe from the magazine and then started experimenting with other blends, altering ingredients and amounts to reflect different cuisine influences.

Why use a spice paste over a marinade? For one thing, you need time to marinate a piece of meat. Because a spice paste clings to the meat and forms a crust, you don’t have the waiting time you have for a marinade. You could rub the spice paste on a couple of hours ahead of time, but you don’t have to.

Once cooked, the pungent, textured crust beautifully contrasts the plain, juicy meat. Unlike a marinade, which evenly coats a cut of meat and results in a consistently flavored finished dish, the spice paste comes with surprises: a cluster of ginger here, a nugget of garlic there.

The formula for a spice paste is simple: a few ground spices + puréed aromatics like ginger, garlic, chiles + salt and pepper + just enough oil to create a medium. Here’s one of my favorites from this week. (I rubbed it on thick pork loin chops, then grilled them):

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While putting together last week’s root source on carrots, the question of peelers came up. There are tons to choose from at prices that range from a few dollars to $30. But the basic question boils down to this: straight or Y?

When it comes to kitchen equipment, I think most of us prefer what we’re used to. We adapt to — and even come to love — all sorts of things that no editor of Cooks Illustrated would “highly recommend” or even “recommend with reservations” because it’s what we’ve got or it’s what we’ve always used.

I myself was a devotee of the Y peeler, having grown up using one in my parents’ house. My last peeler disappeared during a recent move. Since I had to replace it anyway, I decided to try out a straight peeler to see how it compared.

I bought a straight peeler by OXO and the plain plastic Y peeler from Williams-Sonoma that I used growing up.

In prepping a pound of carrots, I alternated between the two. Surprisingly, I found myself giving up on the Y peeler about halfway through. The straight peeler was easier to draw side-to-side along the carrots, and it took off a thinner peel, which was helpful for the slender carrots I was using. I found the OXO handle to be a little wide for my small hands, but unless I was going to be peeling a Beetle Bailey-size stack of potatoes, I don’t think it’d be a problem.

The orientation of the blade really depends on how you peel — I had been used to peeling downwards towards myself and the Y is a lot easier for that. But the transition from up and down to side-to-side was simple enough to make, and for carrots much easier.

A few plus notes for the Y: the small plastic peeler was nice and light, and without the rubbery handle it was much easier to clean. Also, on a russet potato, butternut squash and other larger vegetables, this peeler takes off larger swaths easily.

I’m curious to know what’s worked for you. Are you a Y peeler or straight peeler peeler?

As a side note, I wasn’t exactly without peelers before. But of all of the stupidly designed objects that I have seen in the kitchen, the peeler I was using is the stupidest: whoever invented it put a little mini-grater on the handle. This means that you can’t actually hold the handle, for fear of slicing your palm open with every stroke.

I’m down at the beach in North Carolina for the long weekend. Today for lunch, we were craving something crunchy and light to go with sliced pork sandwiches.

In the fridge, we had a head of green cabbage and some prepared horseradish (which we always have on hand to make cocktail sauce for boiled shrimp). I decided to combine the two in a slaw. I was heavy-handed with the horseradish and apple cider vinegar to give the cabbage a nasal heat and sour bite.

Here’s the recipe:

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In this week’s root source, we looked at the carrot. If you’re not yet subscribed to the root source, you can sign up here.

(for step-by-step instructions on how to glaze carrots, check out the post below, or take a look at our simple glazed carrots recipe on Cookthink.com)

I learned how to glaze carrots on a ski trip to Utah I took with a girlfriend and her family. A week before the trip, I broke my hand during a Christmas party fistfight with my cousin (long story), so I wasn’t able to do much skiing. I tried to make up for it by being useful, helping out with meals where I could.

My then-girlfriend’s mother loved to cook and talk about cooking. She walked me through the simple steps for an old-school glazing, and the results were absurdly pleasing. The only glazed carrots I’d ever had were the saccharine lumps from buffet lines and meat-and-threes in Alabama. Eaten right out of the pan, these were tart and sweet (she’d added apple juice), slightly caramelized with the hint of butter cut by the generous amount of ground pepper she used.

We do it a little differently now, having found a modification of James Peterson’s classic approach to be the best.

First, peel four carrots and chop into 2-inch pieces. The pieces won’t be the same thickness, but that’s okay — you’ll just have more texture in the finished dish.

Next, in a medium saucepan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter over medium-high heat.

When the foam subsides, add the carrots and shake the pan to coat the carrots. I like to let the carrots sit and cook half a minute or so before moving on. Up to you. Season the carrots lightly with kosher salt and ground black pepper, then sprinkle 1 teaspoon of sugar over them. Shake the pan to coat the carrots, then add enough water to come halfway up the carrots. (Don’t use much more than 1/2 cup though or you’ll have too much water left in the pan.)

Cover the pan and cook the carrots for 10 minutes or so.

Uncover the pan and let the remaining moisture evaporate. When it does, let the carrots cook on the bottom of the pan, rolling them to brown on all sides, about 3-5 minutes. Then, add 1 tablespoon of water to help unlodge the flavorful brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. Swirl to cover the carrots with the glaze and cook a minute more.

Eat. Love. Repeat with other root vegetables.

Recipe: Simple Glazed Carrots (Cookthink)
Recipe: Glazed Parsnips (Cookthink)
Recipe: Glazed Turnips (Cookthink)

The main Cookthink site will go live in a few weeks. In preparation, we’re going to start to unveil some of the features soon. Once we do launch, we’ll be in the obligatory beta mode all summer so that you can help us fix and finetune.

But before we started posting any details of the site here, I felt that we should offer one very important warning: when it launches, Cookthink will have zero dessert recipes. No custards. No flans. No pies. No fools.

We’ve debated the wisdom of this many times, but we always come back to the idea that desserts are such an amazing and massive genre and we want to respect that. Just as we thought long and hard about our recipe map (which itself will be far, far from complete at launch), we wanted to take time to figure out how to think about and approach desserts in a way that makes sense for Cookthink.

That said, I have a formidable sweet tooth, so I can’t resist any chance to write and test recipes that pack a little sugar.

So for this week’s root source on carrots, I convincingly argued that these carrot-ginger muffins were in no way dessert-ish — or at least no more dessert-ish than, say, glazed carrots. (Nevermind the butter, sugar and cinnamon in the glaze.)

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There’s a spreading case of Indian Alphonso mango fever.

Our pal Amanda, of Metrocurean, alerted us to the scramble for the Indian mango, which, after a decades-long ban in this country, started shipping to the U.S. from India a few weeks ago. Supply is limited and it’s got people worked up into “near hysteria.”

Amanda has heard that they’re being served at her favorite Indian restaurant in D.C. Asian Keng, a fellow Grand Mart devotee, has tried a lot of fruit but not the “coveted Indian mangoes.” In Philadelphia, Sarah has come up empty (as a Philly reporter looks for mango sources). They’re being searched for on the floor of the National Restaurant Association convention in Chicago. Jonathan Forester’s eager at Slashfood. Rumors abound on Chowhound. Tom Karst, the Packer’s national editor, has marveled at the price the Alphonsos are bringing in, but he’s not yet seen any fruit.

In fact, I’ve found only two instances of anyone having actually eaten Indian mangoes in the U.S. One was in the press release from the Indian Embassy about the mangoes’ arrival. The other was at the Chicago-area blog Drive-Thru, where the writer describes the event with the rapturous tone of someone just off a celebrity encounter:

The proprietor we spoke to said that many people are purchasing five, 10 or even 15 cases at a time. He received 160 cases the day before we arrived and had five remaining. We gladly handed him our money and took our box of mangoes home. Before we put away any of our other groceries we cut open the box to find 12 mangoes wrapped in mango-colored foam netting. We popped one out, cut it open, and closed our eyes before taking a bite of a delicious Alphonso mango. And it was heavenly. The stem end seemed floral. Hints of jasmine and rosehips merged into more citrusy and tart flavors at the bottom of the fruit.

Has anyone else found the Alphonso?

Whenever the mood strikes, I make burritos with whatever vegetables I have lying around — carrots, bell peppers, sweet potatoes, zucchini, it doesn’t really matter. I mix in some beans, cumin, coriander and Monterey Jack cheese, then finish with hot sauce.

Sometimes I make a quick version of guacamole to have alongside the burritos. I usually keep it plain (diced avocado, lime juice, red pepper flakes) since the burritos have lots of flavor and plenty of salt with the cheese, beans and hot sauce.

Last night, while testing a burrito for this week’s root source on carrots, I made a guacamole somewhere between my usual pared-down version and the more traditional version. It was seasoned enough to eat like a salad, which is what I did.

Here’s the recipe:

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We’re going to be featuring carrots in this week’s root source. Because they’re so popular, we debated whether or not to mention baby carrots, those adorable little veggie nuggets that go so well with a large tub of dip (like, say, hummus).

But since we don’t often cook or eat baby carrots, we decided to skip them and stick with the real things. (I’m going to a wedding this weekend, though, and I bet you $10 they’ll have them there. What weddings don’t?)

Still, it’s worth mentioning here that those carrots aren’t babies at all. No, instead they’re just really big carrots — generally ones that are too gnarled to be sold whole — widdled down to baby size. Andrea at Wise Bread told the whole sordid tale well, with a heavy emphasis on the fact that those carrot nuggets are in fact far more expensive than carrots bought in their fully grown forms.

USA Today also did an article a few years ago on the rise of this miniaturized vegetable, from its humble beginnings in frozen food to its peak as a fixture in lunch boxes everywhere. (Also check out Grimmway Farms for some information on how baby carrots are “cut into two-inch pieces and lathed to uniform width.”)

The biggest problem for me with these processed carrots is that their taste tends to be as small as their size; that’s why they’re so good with things on them. They do have a noticeable snap to them, but once bitten, they’re watery and generally lack the sweetness of a real carrot (as well as much of the vitamin content). If you’ve been munching on the baby variety for a while, give a full-size carrot a try (preferably one that’s fresh and organic), and you’ll be amazed at the difference.