PITTSBURGH — There's a universality to the charm of carrots.

Daucus carota come long and slender, short and squat and everywhere between. Nowadays, carrots are typically orange — the product of careful cultivation by Dutch farmers in the 16th and 17th centuries — but you can find a rainbow of purple, red, white and yellow carrots at the markets, too.

The mighty roots have played a starring role in cucina povera (Italian "cuisine of the poor") and haute (Italian for "high") cuisine for centuries, and are grown across the globe.

Cooked alongside onions and celery stalks, carrots are the foundational flavors of mirepoix in France and sofrito in Italy. Carrots join with celery root and leeks in Germany to become suppengrün. In the Philippines, a blend of carrots, garlic, onions and tomatoes serves as the base for many dishes.

A carrot's flesh is crisp and juicy when used raw. It's the perfect companion for apples and turnips or parsnips in an autumn salad, or finely sliced and blended with cabbage for a robust coleslaw. Raw carrots tend to sweeten and have deeper notes of baking spice with the first frost of the season (which we typically would have seen by now in Western Pennsylvania).

Carrots deliver a tender, mellow sweetness when cooked.

Chop them into chunks to simmer as the trumpet in an international roster of soup. Steam them to just tender and dress with a hint of olive oil, honey, mint and lemon juice for a spa-cuisine side to glazed salmon. Roast the roots over hot coals to add a touch of smoke and maximize a carrot's meatiness.

Cookbook author Marcella Hazan extols the virtue of braising carrots (with a good knob of butter) in her seminal work, "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking."

In it, she writes:

"I know of no preparation in the Italian repertory, or in other cuisines, for that matter, more successful than this one in freeing the rich flavor that is locked inside the carrot. It does it by cooking the carrots slowly in no more liquid than is necessary to keep the cooking going so that they are wholly reduced to their essential elements of flavor."

Sweet and sour carrots

This is one of my go-to lunch and weeknight side dishes to highlight the savory sweetness of carrots. It takes less than 10 minutes from start to finish and hits a bunch of big flavor notes. If you don't have sushi vinegar you can use white wine or apple cider vinegar plus a pinch of sugar instead. This recipe is easy to scale up.

1/2 pound carrots

1 shallot

2 teaspoons olive oil

1 tablespoon butter, split in half

2 teaspoon sushi vinegar

1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint

Slice carrots into 1/4 -inch rounds.

Dice shallot.

Add olive oil and half of the butter to a hot pan.

Add carrot and shallots and cook until just tender, approximately 2 minutes.

Remove from heat and add vinegar, mint and the second half of the butter, shaking pan to incorporate all the ingredients.

— Hal B. Klein, Post-Gazette

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