Purple Casserole

I forgot to take a pic. I found this pic on Unsplash, taken by Hello, I'm Nik, which shows heritage carrots. If you google them you'll find some better pics, but I am always concerned about copyright.

The ruby red and pale yellow carrots don't have the same impact as the purple carrots, though they are just as robust and flavourful. The purple carrots are PURPLE!!!!!!! and the colour runs. It's like the single red sock dying the rest of the wash pink. So the chicken casserole I made, with purple potatoes, carrots, pickled onions and a few chicken pieces with a pack of chicken cuppa soup was seriously purple. Even the chicken pieces were tinted a delicate mauve. The men enjoyed it and I shall make a habit of putting in the pickled onions instead of fresh, as they definitely add to the flavour. 

I have a few old cookbooks, and they all recommend boiling carrots for long, long time. I just checked Mrs Beeton and she recommended one and three quarter hours to two and one quarter hours for large carrots, like ours. If you try that with supermarket carrots, I suspect that all you would get would be a sort of insipid carrot soup. However the heritage varieties were tough. An hour and a half  at 200C (around 400F) in a casserole, with plenty of water and the acid from the pickles, and the carrots still had some bite to them, which was more than the potatoes did. 

DH had an unexpected bonus as his boss shared out money that he would have spent on the Christmas meal out. This was enough to cover the £60 year's subscription to Britbox. I plan to spend some time binge watching Midsommer Murders as I never seemed to be able to catch them when they were first on and I really enjoyed them. We have all spent some time browsing the contents. I suspect bear and DH will be bingewatching Doctor Who. I quite fancy dipping into some of the Poirot episodes. I am confident that we shall get value from it, though we didn't consider it before the bonus.

Hugs and good health to all.