Growing Purple Carrots and Purple Stew

 I have very heavy clay soil in my garden, not really suitable for carrots (from what I have read and understand) and therefore I grew them in my deepest planter.  I have ended up with my first crop of carrots ever, quite wide on width but a little stumpy with what looks like carrot tails coming out of the bottom.  Not quite sure what this is about  if anyone could give me an idea would be helpful as I am certainly going to grow more carrots next year and I want to put any mistakes right.  However I am grateful that I got a crop of carrots out of it.  You really do learn as you go along. The flavour is always far better picked straight from the soil and is possibly the best way of getting all your vitamins as there are no air miles or road miles for delivery. Carrots are that deep purple hue of Beetroot.  They taste lovely and I think would be good to ring the changes with a salad.  Would certainly make the salad pop out.  I am certainly going to grow them again.  I have a bag that I am collecting seeds in for planting next year.  I have ordered lots of Nasturtiums, Sweet Peas, Butternut Squash, Scarlet Emperor Beans so far.  Going to have a look on the seed sites to see what else I need.

The carrots still with the compost clinging to them.

I bought Stewing Steak the other day to make the first stew of the season. I thought that I was tempting fate putting the purple carrots in but I was eager to try them.  I have made the stew using the veggies that I have including frozen veggies i.e. parsnip, swede and Leeks. Fried onion,(leftover from last night's tea) Shallots, orange carrots, peas, home dried thyme on the stem, home dried Bay leaves, seasoning white pepper, Marigold veg powder, and stock.  Now in the Ninja on the Pressure cooker mode, it has come up to pressure and doing its thing. This will take about 55 minutes as I always start the ingredients off in a frying pan with a light Saute even though the machine has this facility.  Due to the amount of ingredients today it was easier to do it this way.  The only thing I do not add is potato as the Ninja does not seem to like the thickness the gravy goes to when the potato goes in.  So I always add this and leave it to cook for a while after the pressure cooker has done its thing.

All I need now is a purple Witches hat and a broom and I will be off, off and away.  I have the Cat!

I do like to have some veggies all year around.  As we often have a roast here, I always freeze Shallots or Pickling onions, Sweet Potato, Swede and Leeks to use out of season as well.  I have just used the last of the Leek from last year.  I do make it stretch a bit.

Stew

I started off the stew off by sealing the meat in a little flour.

Adding in the veggies.  The big yellow clump is diced swede which needs using up as part of the Freezer run-down in readiness for cleaning. There are peas, swede, shallots which have been halved, frozen leek, frozen parsnip as well as orange carrots and purple carrots.

Veggies all done with a light Saute and ready to go into the Ninja for cooking on the pressure cooker mode.  Makes lovely steak and chicken pie fillings which are also on the agenda during the coming months.

This is the stew after finishing its initial cooking in pressure cooking mode.  I will now add the potatoes to cook on the Saute function and then check to see how much the potatoes have thickened the gravy up.  I taste and add in more Worcestershire Sauce (Lea & Perrins) if necessary and more seasoning.  Then ready to cook.  Normally I serve with mashed potato but today we are just going to have bowls full each served with bread.  Hopefully there will be enough left tomorrow as G has a habit of going back for seconds.  I had planned for a second meal and possibly a third meal each however sometimes it does not go that far.

After the Ninja had released all the pressure.  It needs to be thickened up a little bit more. The potatoes helped a lot but needs to be a tad thicker.

I serve stew in the smallest size Pyrex bowls to make sure that we get plenty of stew in one fair hit and can dunk the bread properly.  The bowl is quite deep.

Very tasty and very warming.  Went down a treat.

I am hoping that the Purple Stew makes up for the looks in taste.  Fingers crossed and toes plaited.  

Well the taste is not bad at all.  I have had my spoon in dipping every so often on the taste and adding bits and bobs in as I go along. The stew though will be better for being left to cool and then cooking it up again tomorrow, but we cannot wait until tomorrow before having.  We are having our rations tonight.  Taste will be a lot better tomorrow though it always is. The purple carrots have lost their colour a bit.  Might just be the variety.

It has been a beautiful afternoon here although it was raining earlier on.  The Sun has just come out to play as well.

I am going to be busy.

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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