Curried Roasted Carrot Dip

The Recipe:

Curried Roasted Carroted Dip

Roasting carrots before making the classic dip from Veganomicon. Two kinds of garlic – sweetly roasted, and spicy raw, light, good as a dip for veggies, a spread on crackers or sandwiches.

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Course Appetizer

Cuisine American

Ingredients

  

For the Roasting Pan

• 450 g (1 lb) carrots cut into ½ chunks
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 tsp olive oil
• ¼ tsp salt

For the Dip

• 40 g (¼ cup) roasted sunflower seeds if you have raw on hand toast with cumin seeds, if already salted, adjust salt in recipe
• ½ tsp cumin seeds heaping
• ½ tsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp curry powder
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1-2 Tbsp Water (as need for consistency)
• 1 tsp olive oil extra virgin will add to flavour.

Instructions

 

Roast the Carrots

• Preheat oven to 400F/200C/180C fan
• Cut carrots into 1/2 inch thick chunks, toss with olive oil and salt and garlic cloves and spread out in a roasting tin.
• Roast in the oven until the carrots are tender and lightly browned around the edges 20-40 min (start checking around 20 minutes and stir around from time to time)
• Remove from oven and let cool slightly (until warm to the touch)

While that's happening

• Dry toast the cumin seeds over low/medium heat until browned and fragrant grind in a spice grinder or with a mortar and pestle.
• If raw, toss sunflower seeds in the same pan until fragrant.

Make the dip

• Put sunflower seeds in blender or food processor and pulse until they are crumbs.
• Add roasted carrot mixture, cumin, raw garlic, curry powder, 1 tsp olive oil, and lemon juice. Pulse until smooth, scrape down the sides from time to time.
• Taste and adjust salt, spices, lemon juice, and water.
• aaaaaaand done.

Notes

• Great as a dip (crackers, breadsticks, raw veg) but also great as a spread for sandwhiches. 
• Imagine if you will:
  • Sourdough Bread
  • a healthy layer of this diip
  • some toasted pumpkin seeds sprinkled on top
  • a couple shreds/strips of beet(root)
  • nom
• Next time I plan to parboil the carrots – boil 3 minutes, then roast as above, it should require less time in the oven.

Keyword carrots, dip, spread, vegan, vegetarian

The Waffle:

This is a take on Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Curried Carrot Dip in Veganomicon. We made it and liked it, found it handy, nice to help thin down a “cheesy snack” but wondered – what if we roasted the carrots? Then we never got around to it.

Fast forward, lockdown, and I’m craving a lighter lunch and remembering my cheeky take aways from Lovecrumbs when I worked in CodeBase. They had open face sandwiches with hummus or a vegetable spread and garnishes on the menu (and… grilled cheese with your choice of add ons… something coming soon). Perfect time to give roasted carrots in the curried carrot dip a go.

Lovely on sourdough toast, possibly with something like pumpkin seeds – maybe a couple cheeky feta crumbs? (sorry Isa… I tried). I think I used to eat this on toast, over cream cheese… nom. Today I had it with seeds and chunks of garlic and herb boursin as a side to soup.

Feedback was that roasting the garlic made it too much of a sunday roast flavour – so feel free to omit the roasted cloves but keep the raw ones.