RECIPE: Carrots with Their Tops and Tahini

Celebrate a summer of green sauce by using the whole carrot.

Recently I’ve been branching out into the scary world of cooking without recipes (eek!). It’s been a pretty fun process, filled mostly with moderate to full-fledged successes (and several bombs). I used to always claim that I was more of a recipe follower than creator, but I’m coming to realize I’ve absorbed way more lessons from my cookbooks than I’d given myself credit for.

Here are some cooking trends I’ve internalized recently:

• Add anchovies, pickles, and other playthings from Brooklyn.

• Put a tahini or yogurt sauce beneath proteins and/or veg.

• Top things off with a mound of herbs, especially dill.

I’ve discovered that if I remix these four bullet points, I usually wind up with a very good dish, if not excellent. But not every meal calls for a tinned fish or a tahini whip. Herbs, however, are always a good idea.

Well, of course herbs are a good idea! This is not a revelation. Herbs elevate a dish both in flavor and aesthetics, and they often are the key element in transforming my mediocre experiments into pretty solid fare. But when I highlight herbs as a trend, I’m talking about excessive herbage - like so many herbs they look like they were shot out of a t-shirt gun. That’s the thing that the cool kids love. And I want to be a cool kid. Up with herbs!

Sometimes, however, I yearn for more in life. Why scatter herbs when you can drizzle them?

Lately, as I’ve been grabbing summer herbs by the handful (as per the hipster doctrine), I’ve been thinking a lot about Colu Henry’s super popular Creamy White Beans with Herb Oil. I’ve been obsessed less with the recipe (which is very good, don’t get me wrong) and more with the mouthwatering photo that accompanies it: lush beans swimming in an invitingly green, herby oil. When my herbs grow up, I want them to be that sauce.

It’s not a difficult sauce - just herbs, oil, lemon, and seasoning. But for some reason, every time I wing it, things go awry (and I wing it often because I’m trying to go recipe-free). My proportions are usually off, and then I panic and start adding things in like pistachios or vinegar or even - shockingly - honey. I’m telling you, it’s madness in my kitchen.

The upside is that my Choose Your Own Adventure usually ends with a very tasty sauce. They’re all kind of iterations of each other, but they work, which is what matters most.

And so for me, summer cooking in 2024 has featured a lot of herby sauces. I want to call many of them pestos, but I’m not sure that they actually are. Others land in a chimichurri space or even a chermoula. People are very touchy about what is and what isn’t a certain type of sauce or condiment; so ultimately, I’ll just invoke a simple umbrella term: green sauce. ‘Tis the summer of green sauce for me, inspired by NBD Fancy auteurs and beyond.

When I start futzing around with a green sauce, I usually follow a model from Bonnie Frumkin’s book Kachka. Her perlovka salad has been in the rotation for about 6 years now, and it involves tossing pearled barley with a wonderful sauce of sorrel, hazelnuts, dill, garlic, lemon juice, oil, and vinegar. I’ve made this dish so many times that I’ve practically memorized the recipe, and now I just sub in different items depending on vibe or availability.

Last weekend, instead of sorrel, I tossed in arugula and lemon juice. My usual hazelnut subs are pistachios, almonds, or cashews, but I didn’t have enough of either; so I threw in salted peanuts. It worked. I drizzled the whole thing over some air-fried carrots to spectacular effect. Best of all, there was enough left over to use on some air-fried cauliflower a week later.

Since it’s summer, I’ve also been benching dill in favor of basil. I recently whipped up a faux pesto - faux because it featured pistachios instead of pinenuts, had no garlic, and included a splash of vinegar. So… maybe not a pesto at all? Either way, a pesto-inspired GREEN SAUCE. It was fab.

I also threw some fresh fava beans into a recent green sauce, which worked out pretty nicely — definitely moved the sauce closer to a paste. I thinned it out with some oil and ultimately discovered it could just be tossed as-is into a pot of rigatoni and thinned out / emulsified with some starchy pasta water.

This is all a lot of babbling to emphasize that I’m really into green sauce right now, and to that end I’d like to share with you one of my favorite outcomes.

---

Inspired by several similar dishes I’d either made or seen in my cookbooks, I decided to cook up some carrots and use their tops as the base of a pesto (or, rather, “pesto”). I’d had success with an arugula green sauce; so why not use carrot tops?

I threw the carrots in the air-fryer (a device I primarily use to roast vegetables) and got to work on the green sauce. First I put a clove of garlic and some whole coriander seeds into a manual chopper (I didn’t have the stamina to deal with cleaning a food processor; so I opted for a simpler machine - more on that later).

Once everything had been sufficiently minced up, I added many pistachios and cashews. About a cup total. More chopping ensued - as well as regrets about eschewing the food processor for an easier-to-clean but more rigorous-to-use device. Lastly, I squeezed in the juice from half a lemon and then roughly diced some carrot tops and added them to the chopper - but only about a cup as I was at full capacity now.

I set about arduously pressing down on the chopper’s plunger, which did not move easily. Eventually though, after much grunting, I managed to achieve a nice mixture. All it needed was some olive oil to smooth it out. The end result was somewhere between a persillade and a gremolata (again, this is why we just say green sauce).

When the carrot top mixture was in a good place, I deposed it to a bowl and used the same chopper to quickly make a tahini sauce involving lemon and a dash of chili crisp. Whatever had remained in the bowl of the chopper was swiftly and intentionally incorporated into this second sauce. Lastly, I thinned the tahini out with some water and seasoned with salt.

This all culminated in a classic NBD Fancy presentation: fork-tender carrots festooned with their own tops and served on a (bed? swath? puddle?) of zingy tahini sauce.

SO GOOD. The tops made for a chunky, fragrant green sauce that meshed beautifully with the carrots and tahini. Carrots brought sweetness, the green sauce brought tart. Both kept each other in balance.

I don’t know what inspired me to add the coriander seeds to the green sauce - something probably leached into my brain after having read a recipe somewhere - but the instinct was a good one. The seeds released a floral scent to the dish as well as a pleasant bite.

The manual chopper also turned out to be a happy accident. Without the horsepower of an electric food processor, the green sauce was thick and pasty in a way that texturally complemented the tahini sauce instead of competing with it. The manual chopping lent additional crunch to the dish, and when all three components came together - carrots, tops, tahini - it was perfection.

This one goes in the rotation!

---

Carrots with Their Tops and Tahini

Ingredients:

1 bunch of carrots with tops attached (or 1 cup parsley, spinach, or arugula)

salt

pepper

1/2 cup plus 2 tbs olive oil

1 clove garlic

1 tsp whole coriander seeds

1/2 cup pistachios

1/2 cup cashews

1 lemon

1/2 cup tahini

1/2 tsp chili crisp (optional)

The Method

1. Cook the carrots: Preheat an air fryer to 400°F. If you don’t have an air fryer, use an oven or toaster oven - ideally with convection heat if possible.

2. Remove carrot tops from carrots, reserving about a cup of them. Peel and trim carrots, then toss them with 1/2-1 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp pepper and 1 tbs of olive oil.

   1. If using an air fryer, do this in a bowl. If using an oven, just use the sheet pan that you’ll be roasting these bad boys on.

   2. The salt measurements are a guideline based on personal taste and number of carrots. Do what feels right.

3. Roast carrots in the air fryer for 18 minutes or until carrots are tender and browning, tossing midway through. If using an oven, it may take longer. Just test with a fork, and if it goes it easily, the carrots are ready.

4. Make the green sauce: In a manual chopper, add the garlic clove and coriander seeds and process until coarsely minced. Add the pistachios and cashews and continue to process until coarsely chopped.

   1. In lieu of a manual chopper, a mortar and pestle works here too but will require more effort. There’s also a world where you just chop everything by hand. Of course, you can use a food processor, but they can be aggressive, and you may too finely puree everything, sacrificing texture. It will still great, and if you really want that crunch, you can always chop your nuts separately and add them to the green sauce at the end.

5. Add a cup of the carrot tops (or whatever you’re subbing in - parsley, arugula, spinach, etc) to the chopper. Also add the juice of half the lemon and 3/4 tsp salt. Process until the mixture is as finely chopped as you can get it, which may not be that much tbh. Depends on your chopper.

6. Add 1/2 cup olive oil and process until the texture is sort of like guacamole. Sort of stiff, but mushy. The nuts, of course, will make it crunchy. If it turns out looser, nbd. You just want something you can dollop.

7. With a rubber spatula, scoop the mixture out of the chopper into a cup or something, but don’t clean the bowl! Oh, and keep that spatula handy.

8. Make the tahini sauce: To the chopper add 2/3 cup of tahini, the juice from the other half of the lemon, 1 tbs olive oil, 1/4 tsp salt, and the optional chili crisp. Process. It should be fairly stiff. Add water, 1 tablespoon at a time until the mixture resembles whipped yogurt. Taste for seasoning. If you want more bite and are out of lemon, drizzle some vinegar (white or unseasoned rice vinegar is nice here).

   1. It may be lumpy from the carrot top stragglers, which is fine. What you don’t want is grainy. Just keep adding water until it looks right. And if you make it too thin, you can always add more tahini. Live your life!

   2. Taste for seasoning. If you want more bite, squeeze more lemon. Or, if you’re out of lemon, drizzle some vinegar (white or unseasoned rice vinegar is nice here).

9. Pour the tahini onto a plate and swirl around with your rubber spatula so it looks cute but fancy. NBD fancy, if you will. Top with carrots and dollop the green sauce all over. Enjoy!

   1. Feel free to just pour the tahini it onto a plate and be done with it. No need to be precious.

   2. Use as much of the tahini sauce as you want. No need to dump the whole thing onto the plate. (Although I just did, and it was great)

   3. The recipe makes way more green sauce than necessary. Just save what’s leftover and use it for other things… or more carrots!

   4. You could invert the whole thing: green sauce on bottom, tahini on top. New perspectives!

Additional notes:

• Using carrot tops not only feels good (using the whole vegetable - yay!) but it’s kind of like a 2-for-1 purchase, ingredients-wise.

• If you only have one type of nut, that’s fine! Use a cup of it. And feel free to experiment with any other nut that you like (hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts etc)

Here are some pics to help you visualize parts of the process.

No need to tightly pack your carrot tops. This is how I measure my cup’s worth.

The green sauce is almost like a spread when made in a manual chopper. I was miffed at first, but then it turns out that I liked it this way more.

Using a food processor results in a sauce that resembles a classic pesto, which is perfectly delicious. You just miss some of the crunch that the manual chopper affords. Note here that the tahini sauce is fairly green because it collected more green sauce leftovers in the food processor bowl.

This is pretty much what the tahini sauce should look like: creamy, whipped, fluid, and not grainy. All the bits and lumps come from leftover green sauce in the bowl of the chopper.

A visual reference for how the carrots should look when they are cooked. There’s browning and shriveling, and we like that!

And here it is all together. I garnished with some finishing oil, but it was unnecessary. I’ll omit that going forward.