Carrot top pesto & kamo kamo

Our local vege growers market on Sundays often has veges I don’t usually use, have never used, or have never even seen before. We have come up with the concept of a ‘challenge vegetable’ where most times we pick up something we don’t usually eat/prepare and have a go.

My sister laughed and said “so you pick something new and let it languish in your fridge until it goes mouldy and you have to chuck it out?” OK, so that does happen, but not always.

The big green marrow thing is called kamo kamo (I think, please correct me if the spelling is wrong). I decided to roast it with butter and garlic. I used the first lot of our own home grown garlic which was very exciting for me.

And yes, I’m sure everyone has had carrots before, but how many of you have ventured into eating the tops of the carrots? I wanted a dish that used the whole carrot together and I came across this one for making a pesto of the tops to go on the roasted carrots. I initially thought that the pesto I made was a write-off, I couldn’t get the greens properly chopped in my blender – the recipe said to use a food processor which I don’t have, and next time I’ll chop them small before blanching them. It didn’t taste all that good either, but then I realised I hadn’t added the salt and pepper.

My other half loved the pesto, he had a big helping of it on its own after finishing off the rest of his meal. It was rather tasty. And if the carrots we have planted in our garden don’t amount to much, we can at least use the tops 🙂