It all started with my mom telling me that she enjoyed eating roasted carrots. “I really like how you do it,” she said. Whenever she says that, she’s signaling that she wants me to repeat something. Only this time, she added that she’d bought a 5-pound bag of carrots on a very steep discount at the supermarket.Mom is frugal and can’t pass up a good deal, even though she’s mostly cooking for herself these days, ever since my dad passed away. I roasted the carrots off for her with cumin and wrote up the recipe in an earlier e-newsletter dispatch. Planning for the future, in case my mom got more carrots, I pondered more ways to serve roasted carrots. They are very easy to prepare as a side dish. Plus, the holidays are coming up. So, how could I doll up roasted carrots?The Cook You Want To BeThat’s when I spotted a creamy nuoc cham recipe in Andy Baraghani’s provocative debut cookbook, The Cook You Want To Be. Only in his early thirties, Baraghani has a well-established career in food as a...
