Glazed Look

Some people can get by on four hours sleep, others on eight hours sleep however on the evening of Saturday April the 20th I needed eleven hours sleep after entertaining some friends at a local restaurant on Saturday dinnertime and having a night on the town on the Friday evening.

When I woke up I brushed the cobwebs away with a walk in the local wood in bright sunshine before turning my attention to cooking the evening meal. The main course was something I had made before however one of the side dishes was something that's new to this blog and what I am going to focus on.

To help me through the preparation of some Glazed Parsnips I put Stevie Wonder's 1972 album Music of my Mind on the CD player. The album's synthesisers which, like most of the instruments on the album, are played by Wonder himself give it a lush and warm sound that gave glow inside like the late spring sun that shone through the kitchen window.

I first topped and tailed three large parsnips and then peeled them. They have a habit of being very stringy and therefore a lot of pressure needed to be applied to the skin as I peeled to be sure all the string had been removed. Once this task was complete I cut the parsnips into batons that were five centimetres long and one centimetre thick. I then steamed them for five minutes to soften them up before adding them to a frying pan covered with olive oil on a medium heat.

I turned the parsnips with a knife and fork and as they began to turn brown I added the leaves from four sprigs of fresh Thyme taken from my front garden and stirred the leaves into the parsnips until they coated them.

Once the parsnips had turned a pale brown I added around an ounce and a half of honey together with a pinch of black pepper. I stirred the honey so that it coated the parsnips and once the excess honey had been absorbed into them I turned the heat off and served them with the rest of the dish I had prepared.

As hoped the parsnips had taken on a glazed appearance and by adding the Thyme before the honey I was able to ensure the honey acted to lock in the Thyme to the parsnips and give them extra flavour. The addition of the black pepper meanwhile acted to ensure the honey did not make the parsnips sweet enough to spoil them or the rest of the main course.

As the excess honey evaporates so the parsnips move closer to being ready