Of all the much talked about superior flavour of organically grown vegetables, the one for which it is the truest is the carrot.
Carrots seem an inextricable part of British cooking: the base of every stock and many stews. In fact they did not reach us until the fifteenth century, and the orange carrot arrived much later.
Choose firm carrots without hairy roots or brown patches, and fresh looking leaves, if they have them.
Baby carrots are available from large supermarkets - but these are generally dwarf varieties rather than very young specimens, so they taste like the old carrots they are. Better to buy the leafy bunches of carrot thinnings with the sweet flavour of the young vegetable.
Crecy in the name of a dish indicates that it has carrots in it.
Carrots are auspicious vegetables. In Jewish culture the coin shaped slices represent prosperity at the New Year's feast of Rosh Hashanah, cooked in a sweet-savoury dish called a tzimmes. Because tzimmes is a festive dish, the word has come to mean a big fuss.
