Recipe with carrot greens

Carrot top "seaweed" salad (adapted from Melissa Clark)

Ingredients: Carrot greens, sesame seeds, soy sauce, mirin, sake, sugar

Preparing: Cut off greens of carrots (cutting off most of stem, too) and wash well. Blanch greens in salted water for 2 minutes and then plunge in ice water to stop cooking. Then soak greens in cold water overnight, changing the water about 3 times (this removes the bitterness of the greens). The next day, drain and cut greens to 1-2 inch pieces. Make dressing: Toast 3 Tbsp. sesame seeds and grind into a lumpy paste (if you can't grind all seeds well, then drizzle some sesame oil into the dressing), and mix with 1 Tbsp soy sauce, 1 Tbsp sake (or white wine, if you don't have sake), 1 Tbsp mirin and 1/8 tsp sugar (or up the sugar amount a bit, if you don't have mirin). Pour dressing over greens and let marinate for at least an hour before eating.

Eating: Tastes delicious with any Asian-inspired meal or otherwise.

Dish history: We were visiting Jason's sister to celebrate his niece's birthday and we decided 7 bunches of carrot greens couldn't go to waste, so we tried out this recipe at the party. It really does resemble seaweed salad (mainly because of the dressing and color) and accompanied delicious sloppy joes and tabbouleh salad.