Carrot top chimichurri

It’s ostensibly summer here in Leeds, England where I am, and the green grocers are selling carrots with masses of tops on. Actually they’ve been doing so since late spring, but today’s bunch seemed especially abundant (verdant, lush) and I was loathe to throw them away. While I didn’t venture into making carrot top jelly or gel that somebody did on the Great British Menu, I did, after some online research, try out a spin on a chimichurri. Here’s how:

Greens off the tops of a bunch of carrots, picked apart to remove the yellow fronds as well as the thickest part of the stalks. washed well and dried in paper towels

Couple of cloves of garlic

Fennel fronds from the tops of fennel (if available)

A few leaves of marjoram from the garden

I gave the above ingredients a quick whiz in the food processor until the greens were finely chopped/minced. Then added some zested lemon, the juice of half a lemon, and a spice mix of fennel, dried red chillies and salt ground together, and pulsed a few times till mixed in. Then poured in a stream of good quality oil–I used cold-pressed rapeseed but olive will work wonderfully.

I’ve used them to baste carrots, before oven roasting them, but I’m sure they’ll be lovely on sliced steak, in the same way the classic Argentinian chimichurri is served with steak and bread.