Home › The World's Kitchen › Carrots, Vichy
Carrots, Vichy
Neatly scoop and wash in cold water twelve small, sound carrots; cut them into slices a quarter inch thick; place in a saucepan with half an ounce butter and a half pint white broth. Season with half teaspoon salt, a teaspoon sugar, and two saltspoons pepper; add two branches parsley and one branch chervil; lightly mix, cover the pan, boil for ten minutes, then set in the oven for thirty minutes. Remove, take out the parsley and chervil, pour the carrots into a vegetable dish and serve.
A plain braise: carrots cooked in a little stock and butter until the liquid is nearly gone and the sugar and butter form a light glaze. A few of the measures and one vessel need translating.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of pepper is half a teaspoon — assertive but correct for a pound and a half of carrots.
- Half a pint of white brothOne cup. "White broth" means an unbrowned stock, veal or chicken, made without roasted bones; a light chicken stock is the closest thing sold today. Vegetable stock works if you want the dish meatless.
- "Neatly scoop"Scrape or peel the carrots and trim them tidily. Twelve small carrots is roughly 1 to 1 1/2 lb; if you are using the thick supermarket sort, buy by weight and expect to halve them lengthwise before slicing.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as is usual in books of this kind. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits a covered braise of this length. Leave the lid on for the oven stage.
- The hinge: reduce, do not drownThe carrots should finish sitting in a syrupy spoonful or two of buttery liquid, not a pool of broth. If the pan is still wet after the thirty minutes, uncover it on the stovetop and boil hard for a minute or two to glaze.
- ButterHalf an ounce is one tablespoon, a lean amount by modern standards. Two tablespoons, or a knob swirled in at the end off the heat, gives a glossier finish.
- ChervilRarely stocked fresh. A sprig of tarragon plus a little flat parsley gives a comparable anise note; dried chervil contributes almost nothing and can be left out.
- YieldFour side servings. Best served straight from the pan — reheated, the glaze breaks and the slices soften further.
Carrots Vichy takes its name from the spa town of Vichy in central France, and the classical version is cooked in Vichy water rather than stock: an alkaline, bicarbonate-rich mineral water that is traditionally said to keep the slices tender and bright. Whether the chemistry does much is arguable, but the association stuck, and à la Vichy on a French menu came to mean carrots cut in coins and glazed in butter and sugar. This version, with white broth standing in for the mineral water and a bouquet of parsley and chervil, reads as a practical kitchen adaptation -- the sort of small vegetable garnish sent out alongside roast meats.