As many of us know, the farmer’s market is almost in full swing. I only say almost because I’ve yet to see corn, and those delicious tomatoes yet. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saddened that the market has yet to offer these up, I’m actually just pleased that I can visit the market on a weekly basis. This past weekend yielded a head of broccoli, some baby yukon potatoes, some soap, and a great bunch of carrots.
When I got back home, I sat there and looked at those carrots, knowing that I was going to saute them whole with a bit of butter and brown sugar, and then I began looking at the tops. Bright green in color, I knew that I wanted to use them and did not want them to go to waste. At first I was thinking of a simple saute with a bit of garlic and vinegar, and then decided I would attempt to turn them into a pesto, because after all I have been rocking out a variety of pesto recipes lately as well.
I decided that once I had the pesto, instead of slathering it into some pasta, that I would instead top it onto some nice cast iron pizza dough to be used as the bread on the dinner table.
Ingredients for the carrot top pesto:
- 1 bunch of carrot tops, soaked and rinsed in cold water
- 1/4 cup of grated parmesan cheese
- 1/2 cup of olive oil
- 1 clove of garlic
- pinch of salt
Add all of the ingredients into a food processor, and blend until you have a nicely textured pesto. At this point you can use it in pasta, or use it much like you would any other pesto, but instead, I decided to top it onto homemade pizza dough, pressed into a small cast iron skillet, and cooked in the oven until the crust was golden brown.
The result was actually pretty darn good. The pesto itself was slightly bitter, but I thought that was a nice accent to those sweet and buttery sauteed carrots. So the next time you are thinking about putting those carrot tops into your compost, maybe consider making a quick pesto. Hope you enjoy!