Farmer's Market Dinner

First of all, I wish everyone a happy football season, as the Patriots played their first preseason game tonight. It's an important day.

Thursday is also the Mission Hill Farmer's Market, or what is better known as two random farmers setting up stands in Brigham Circle. I always forget that it's there until I walk in that direction leaving my office and spot it. Today everything looked amazing. It really is peak season and their vegetables were bright and hearty. I spent a good 10 minutes pacing around trying to decide what, if anything, to buy, then noticed the barrels of "just dug" red potatoes. Truly fresh potatoes are incredibly delicious and much more tasty than store-bought ones. I was also drawn to the huge bunches of bright orange carrots, with big bushy Bugs Bunny-like tops. I bought a bunch of those as well. My total was $5.45 for the carrots and about a pound of red potatoes - what a great deal.

Bugs Bunny would be jealous!

My initial plan was to throw the potatoes and carrots together in the oven and roast them until crispy, but my mind ran with ideas on the bus ride home. I decided to do two recipes - plain roasted carrots, and Barefoot Contessa's French Potato Salad, since I also had dill and scallions leftover needing to be used. The potato salad I'll be doing on Sunday, and the carrots became part of my meal tonight. I peeled them, cut them on the diagonal, and tossed them with olive oil, sea salt, and pepper. They went into the oven for about 30 minutes on 400 degrees. With the carrots, I decided to cook up one of the extra ears of corn I bought for my couscous salad this week. I roasted it in the husks on the same tray as the carrots in the oven. It was a cool way to cook the corn but unfortunately, the corn itself turned out to be a dud.

The carrots, though, were incredibly tasty. There is such a deep flavor in freshly picked vegetables - it's like you've never really known what carrots taste like. They don't need much added - the little olive oil to brown them up and simple salt and pepper are enough by far. Last minute, I decided to make a mini cheese quesadilla to top it off. All in all a fine evening of weeknight cooking.