Description
Reduce your food waste using carrot tops in a delicious, earthy pesto! Toss in pasta with roasted cherry tomatoes. Pair with Sauvignon Blanc.
Ingredients
Scale
- 2 cups carrot top leaves, minimal stems
- 1/2 cup (packed) fresh basil
- 3 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted
- 1/2 cup high-quality extra virgin olive oil
- 1–2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan
- Roughly 15 oz cherry tomatoes
- Your choice of pasta
- Lemon juice, to taste
- Additional olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic for seasoning along the way
Instructions
- Quickly toast pine nuts over medium in a dry (no cooking oil!) pan on the stove. Watch careful as they can burn in the blink of an eye! Remove them from the pan when they develop a very light brown coloring.
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Toss cherry tomatoes with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic (minced or powder) in a baking dish until evenly coated. Roast in the oven for 20+ minutes. It’s very difficult to over-roast, but at least make sure they’ve roasted to the point of being tender. They should burst in your mouth!
- While the tomatoes roast, bring a pot of salted water to a boil.
- Cook pasta according to directions on the package. Use about half the package (unless you double the pesto recipe quantities).
- In a blender or food processor, combine basil, carrot tops, parmesan, olive oil, and pine nuts. Blend until completely smooth. Taste and add more of any ingredient as needed, to your tastes. Finish off with a squeeze of lemon juice to brighten. Blend again until any additional ingredients have dispersed.
- Remove tomatoes from the oven, drain your pasta, and toss them all together with the pesto.
- Garnish with more freshly grated parmesan.
- Open a bottle of chilled Sauvignon Blanc, and enjoy!
Notes
- This pesto can easily be made vegan by swapping parmesan for nutritional yeast.