food comas

Whenever I move to a new place, one of the biggest elements for me to settle in is getting a handle on all the grocers and local markets.  When I discovered Singapore’s Tiong Bahru wet market over a year ago (and subsequently moved to live right next to it), everything started to click into place.  Now my Hong Kong journey has begun and I am working on discovering the local market scene.  Wet market wise, I have only been to the Central and Wan Chai markets which offer inexpensive fruits and veggies of decent quality but the meats have been questionable.  For meat and grocery purchases, I tend to stick to the main chain stores like Park n Shop (Fusion and Taste are pretty identical, don’t know why they have different names), Wellcome (Marketplace by Jason, Oliver’s), and sometimes C!tySuper which reminds me of a Japanese Whole Foods.  The selection is okay but I have been very much missing the organic farmer’s markets in NYC and pretty much everywhere in California…

But just when I thought I might have to give up on such produce like colorful heirloom tomatoes, I happened to stumble on these beautiful yellow baby carrots at my local Fusion store!  I wanted to preserve the original form and figured the best way to cook these would be to roast them.  Okay, so I pretty always roast my vegetables but this time decided to sweeten them up with a balsamic and brown sugar glaze.  Sweet and simple!

I served these carrots with Chimichurri Marinated Steaks.

Balsamic Roasted Carrots

Yields: 3-4 servings

Ingredients: 

• 1 bunch baby yellow carrots (or 2 cups packaged baby carrots)
• 2 T olive oil
• 2 T balsamic vinegar
• 1 T brown sugar

Directions: 

Preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C).  Spread the carrots on a baking pan and toss with the olive oil.  Roast in the oven for 20 minutes or until tender.

Drizzle the carrots with balsamic vinegar and roast for another 2-3 minutes or until vinegar has evaporated.

Sprinkle the carrots evenly with brown sugar and roast for another 2 minutes until beautifully glazed.