Quick and easy spread, sauce and dip made from the oft-discarded carrot greens. With fresh herbs, pesto and pine nut pasta and lemon to bring out the carrot flavors. This carrot top pesto has a bright and fresh spring flavor and is great anywhere ordinary pesto is used.
Use the whole carrot and create something amazing! Carrot tops are totally edible themselves, and taste faintly of carrot while also having some bitter notes and a slight natural saltiness. The origin of my particular carrot top pesto recipe was the same friend who helped me create my black garlic vinaigrette. We were creating a whole Moroccan-inspired feast including glowing Moroccan vegetable stew, salad with vinaigrette, and crostini with almond ricotta and carrot top pesto. As such, this carrot top pesto evolved to have some vaguely Moroccan-inspired flavors.
Along with the carrot tops themselves I like to include some fresh mint and a few green scallion pieces. Originally the pesto used toasted almonds. I then switched it to walnuts when almonds became the victim of an elimination diet in our household. The carrot top pesto reached its nut-free form when I made it recently and forgot about the walnuts altogether. A jar of bright green carrot top pesto on a cheese platter, with flecks of carrot greens, mint, and walnuts visible. Other carrot top pesto recipes on the internet don’t seem to be blanching their carrot tops. I think it’s a worthwhile step, though.