Want to spice up your Sunday roast? Try these za’atar & honey carrots

There is a certain amount of wiggle room necessary when writing a recipe for carrots, caused principally by the inevitability of the cook (and/or one of their immediate family) munching about 20 per cent of the things raw while peeling and chopping. This is no bad thing. Carrots are not chips, and will do you good, even if they won’t make you see in the dark. Za’atar is a herb mix and you can find it in most supermarkets. It often contains salt, so taste the carrots before you go crazy with the seasoning.

Honey-Roasted Carrots with Za’atar

Serves 6-8

Ingredients
1 tbsp pine nuts
1kg carrots, peeled and thickly sliced
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp runny honey
2 tbsp za’atar
salt and pepper

Method
Preheat the oven to 220°C/gas mark 7.

In a dry frying pan, toast the pine nuts over a medium heat, taking care not to burn them. Set aside.

Toss the carrots with the oil, honey and za’atar, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Roast for 40 minutes, shaking the pan every once in a while. Scatter the toasted pine nuts over the carrots and serve.

TART Depending on what you’re serving this with, a mixture of herbs would work nicely, tossed through at the last minute – mint, parsley and coriander are favourites, but tarragon also works well.

TWEAK Instead of using za’atar, use a couple of spoonfuls of dukkah

TOMORROW Make a soup by softening an onion and a little garlic, then adding a chopped potato and stock. Simmer with the leftover carrots until the potato is cooked, then blend until smooth.

Extracted from Let’s Do Dinner by James Ramsden (Pavilion Books, approx €14). Photograph by Yuki Sugiura.