Recipe: Carrot Top Pesto
Plus, some words on recipes in general!
The people of Page & Plate 2.0 have spoken, and you want recipes. So recipes you shall have, starting with an OG. But first, some words.
Way back when I was teaching cooking classes and catering (who was she?!), there was one recipe that people went crazy for every single time: carrot top pesto. Originally created for a sustainable cooking class I co-hosted with Indigo & Violet Studio here in Chicago, this recipe is as zero-waste as it gets, which also means that there are about a thousand ways to make it.
Recipe writing was a huge learning curve when I first started Page & Plate. I learned, very quickly, that the same things that were very instinctual to me were wildly out of the ordinary for a lot of readers. If I’m cooking a recipe that isn’t working for some reason, I have no qualms with adding more water or adjusting the cook time or temperature. This simply isn’t the case for the vast majority of home cooks, no matter their skill level. Improvising in the kitchen is scary. And that is totally fine! I took it as a challenge to make people more comfortable in the kitchen before they even decided what to cook.
That challenge was part of what made me start my now-dormant YouTube channel. I wanted to teach people how to trust themselves in the kitchen before following a recipe blindly. If you don’t have X, you should know that you can use Y instead. I believe (very passionately!) that this kind of knowledge in the kitchen would go a long way towards reducing food waste.
For example, if you know you can use yogurt that’s been thinned with water instead of buttermilk, you won’t need to buy a container of buttermilk that will end up sitting in the back of your fridge and spoiling. Not that this has ever happened to me or anyone I know. Plus, we’re in a not-quite-recession. Who can afford to buy stuff they don’t need? Not me!
The idea with this recipe (which is just ahead, I swear!) was to teach a basic formula. From there, you can do a beautiful food dance and interpret however you and your pantry/fridge see fit. The pasta-bilities are endless! I say that to myself a lot. It’s funny about half of the time.
The question for you, dear reader, is how do YOU feel about this sort of recipe? I have a friend who groans when I give her a recipe like this; she just wants instructions to follow so she doesn’t have to think too hard. Are you like my friend or are you someone who likes active learning? Do you want more formulas to follow or do you want me to be bossy (because believe me, I can do that!)? Let me know below, and please don’t hesitate to respond to this email with questions while you cook!
Carrot Top Pesto
This recipe became one of my most-requested party tricks after I taught it in a few cooking classes. The realization that popcorn and carrot top greens work just as well as the much-more-expensive pine nuts and basil combo blows your mind with every bite. You’ll need a large pot, a blender or food processor, and a slotted spoon.
2 cups of mixed herbs (I’ve used everything from carrot tops to soft herbs [soft herbs = dill, basil, parsley, cilantro; herbs whose stems are easy to chop up and throw in] to kale. Mix and match! Get wild! *inserts Capital One commercial voice* What’s in YOUR fridge?)
1 cup of roughly chopped nuts (pistachios, pecans, walnuts, and pine nuts work well here. So does stale, popped popcorn! Or chips. Or stale sandwich bread soaked in a little bit of water. Just make sure to chop it up before blending.)
1/4 cup of lemon juice (sub white vinegar here and reduce to 2 TBSP)
3 TBSP of nutritional yeast (or grated Parmesan/cheddar/Swiss cheese), very optional
salt and pepper, to taste
8 oz pasta
Find a nice big pot and add a lot of water. Salt it generously, then put it over a high heat and cover to bring to a boil.
Meanwhile, chop your herbs/greens situation. The goal here is to make it as easy as possible to blend the greens until they’re smooth, BUT don’t stress too much because we’re going to chop them once more before they go into the blender. I usually settle for nothing bigger than 2-inch pieces. And no, I do not measure.
Once the water has come to a boil, blanch your greens. “BLANCH!” you might be saying. “WHAT IS THAT?!” It’s just really, really briefly popping something into hot water to flash cook. In this recipe, blanching helps us in two ways: it makes the greens a bit, well, greener AND it makes them softer and easier to blend. To blanch these greens (which is really starting to sound like a phrase I made up), add them to the water for no more than a minute, then remove them with a slotted spoon once they turn a vibrant shade of green and start to look wilt-y (kale might take longer!).
Transfer the greens to a cutting board, and chop the crap out of them. Take special care to chop up any stems — these will kill your blender. Once they’re chopped, add them to your blender or food processor with the nuts/bread/popcorn situation, the lemon juice, nutritional yeast, and some salt and pepper. Set aside.
Bring the pot of water back to a boil, then cook the pasta according to the package directions. Drain, RESERVING THE PASTA WATER, then set aside.
Let’s go back to our blender/food processor situation: pulse a few times to break up your greens and nuts, then add a cup of pasta water and continue blending until smooth-ish. This is where you need to use your common sense and add as much more pasta water as it takes to create a smooth, beautiful sauce. Taste it and add whatever else you think it needs to be delicious. (MSG is great! So is red pepper. So is za’atar!)
To serve, toss the pasta with the sauce, then add to a plate and garnish with a drizzle of olive oil and a few cracks of black pepper.