Glazed Carrots

Choose a wide pan that holds the carrots in a single layer with a little room to spare.

The pan decides this dish. Too deep and the carrots pile up, steam and go soggy long before the liquid reduces; too wide and the liquid boils away while the batons are still raw at the core.

Put the carrots, butter, sugar, the 4g of fine salt and the thyme sprig into the pan.

Pour in the stock, which should come about two-thirds of the way up the carrots rather than covering them.

Use a ladleful of the chicken stock in this collection if you have it. Water and butter alone make the plainer French version and want a little more salt.

Cut a circle of baking paper the width of the pan, crumple it, open it out and press it down onto the surface.

Bring the pan to a simmer over medium heat.

Cook under the paper for 12-15 minutes, until a knife tip goes into a baton with only slight resistance at the centre.

Lift the paper off and pull out the thyme sprig.

Turn the heat up to high.

Boil hard for 4-6 minutes, shaking the pan every 30 seconds, until the liquid has fallen to two or three spoonfuls and turned syrupy enough to cling to the carrots.

Watch that last minute closely. A moment past the syrup stage the sugar catches on the base and the butter splits out as a greasy pool, and there is no bringing it back, so pull the pan off while the glaze still slides.

Roll the carrots through the glaze off the heat until every baton shines.

Season with the ground peppercorns.

Scatter over the parsley and serve straight away.