Recipes: Brown Butter, Meyer Lemon, and Honey Glazed Carrots & Roasted Cauliflower and Chickpeas

I have two delicious and easy sides for you today. These recipes have a few things in common, most importantly, each one includes two things I wasn't crazy about as a kid: cooked carrots and cauliflower. I always have preferred raw carrots to cooked, and I never really liked cauliflower. I always found it to be kind of blah. I think it was because we didn't eat it very often when I was young. Recently, something has changed in me, and I really have grown to like the cruciferous vegetable. Especially if it is mashed into mock garlic mashed "potatoes". Oh my.

I feel as though cauliflower is having a bit of a comeback lately. It is a versatile little veggie! You can use it in place of rice, make a pizza crust with it, or eat it pan-fried on it's own. Here is my adaptation of Gwyneth Paltrow's cauliflower with chickpeas and mustard.

Roasted Cauliflower + Chickpeas with Mustard + Parsley
slightly adapted from It's All Good by Gwyneth Paltrow

1 14-ounce can of chickpeas, rinsed and drained on a kitchen towel
1 head of cauliflower, cut into bite-sized florets
Your favorite high-temp tolerable oil, I like avocado oil
Sea salt
2  tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1/4 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup chopped italian parsley

**please use organic ingredients if possible**

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Toss the chickpeas and cauliflower together in a large roasting pan with 3 tablespoons of the oil and a big pinch of salt. Roast, stirring occasionally, until everything is dark brown and the cauliflower is quite soft, about 45 minutes {it only took about 35 minutes in my oven}.

While the cauliflower and chickpeas are roasting, whisk together the mustard, vinegar, and olive oil with a big pinch of salt and a few healthy grinds of black pepper. When the chickpeas and cauliflower are done roasting, toss them with the mustard dressing and the parsley. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Brown Butter, Meyer lemon, and Honey Glazed Carrots

These are the only kind of cooked carrots I can remember as a kid, but the original recipe calls for sugar. I made some tweaks like replacing the sugar with raw honey and thought it was even better this way!

1 pound carrots, cut into matchsticks, or left whole to your preference
2 tablespoons butter
1.5 tablespoons raw honey
3 tablespoons meyer lemon juice
S&P

**please use organic ingredients if possible**

Steam carrots for about 2-3 minutes, until just soft {they will cook a bit more in the sauce, and I like to maintain a slight crunch to my carrots}

Meanwhile, melt the butter over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally until you see little brown flecks forming on the bottom of the pan {a stainless steel pan is helpful for this}. Once the butter has browned, stir in the honey until it melts and cook the sauce until it thickens a bit. Add carrots, and sautee until they are warmed through and have a nice glaze. Add S&P to taste. Stir in lemon juice, and turn off the heat. Serve warm.

The sauce is seriously good. I may or may not have spent the end of the meal slurping the remaining sauce off a spoon. Classy.

I served these with this and some simple homemade roasted potato "chips" {very thinly sliced potatoes, seasoned with oil, S&P, and roasted in a 400 degree oven until very crispy}

Enjoy!