Carrot Greens with Sesame Dressing

My friend Dori Fern is one of those food friends I can’t
really remember meeting.  It seems like
she and I have always been running into each other at the green market,
standing and chatting about what looks good, what we’re buying, and what we’re
going to do with it.  (Dori is a generous
font of great food tips—thanks to her I now know to add a touch of water
to my homemade mayo.)  I love market
conversations.  They’re spontaneous, and
they capture the spirit of whatever season. 
Strangers chat with strangers—gourd gossip, rutabaga repartee, carrot
confabs, daikon debates…ok.  I’ll
stop.  But often these conversations can
be a bit whacky.  Green market people are
curious, adventurous, and frugal—not
because they’re cheap, but because when you’re looking a grower in the eye, somehow
that produce takes on a greater value.

As a lover of nose-to-tail cooking, it stands to reason that I’d
be into eating every part of a veggie too.  You get a
gorgeous green market bunch of Rainbow Swiss Chard, and it seems a real shame
to throw away those beautifully pigmented stems.  They’re easy to use—slice them up, sauté them,
and then toss into pastas, soups, etc. 
Turnip and beet greens?  Saute them like collard or kale.  But carrot tops?  Their culinary use has pretty much eluded
me.  I’ve used them here and there in
odd-ball herb applications (chopped into a salad or slaw but more for bragging rights about nose-to-tail veggie cookery than because of their flavor).

All this changed recently when I bumped into Dori at Ray Bradley’s stand, collecting people’s
carrot tops (I’ve seen people doing this with beet greens too.) 

Naturally I grilled her about it.  And Dori told me about a carrot green recipe, based on goma ae, she’d discovered
from “Good Food From a Japanese Temple” by Soei Yoneda.  Written in the 80’s by a Buddhist
Abbess, it sounded like a fascinating book full of Zen (vegan) recipes.  And there is absolutely something very Zen
about this recipe.  With all the changes
of water (to eliminate the bitterness) it’s almost devotional. 

You have to be devoted to the notion of stem-to-root eating;
you have to want to use your carrot
tops.  It’s quite a good amount of work
for not a lot of yield (double the recipe while you’re at it, and only use
organic carrot greens.)  But the result
is absolutely delicious:  savory like a
seaweed salad, with a crisp, juicy texture, and a haunting, compelling flavor.  After toasting the sesame seeds, I remembered
that my spice grinder was broken so I just pulsed them up in my blender.  Once I dressed the greens, I gave them a
taste and could tell they needed to sit. 
This dish is one of those things that really gets better with a bit of
marinating (meditation.)  

I had planned on saving
some of the carrot greens to share and show off my new discovery, but I wolfed
them down, standing at the counter.  Which
is really no surprise.  For someone like
me, who’s pretty much stuffed just about everything under the sun into her
mouth, an entirely new flavor is seriously exciting stuff.  I did my best Buddhist “be here now”, trying
to savor the moment in the present.  But
I felt my mind drift back to Dori, amassing carrot greens at the market.  The Buddha was right:  “A jug fills drop by drop.”

Carrot Greens with Sesame Dressing

1 bunch carrot greens, washed and stemmed

3 tablespoons toasted and ground white sesame seeds

1 1/2 teaspoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon sake

1/8 teaspoon sugar

1.  In a large pot of lightly
salted boiling water, parboil carrot greens for 2 minutes then shock in ice
water drain and squeeze dry.  Place in a
new bowl of cold water and refrigerate overnight, changing water 2-3 times to
eliminate bitter flavor.  Drain and
squeeze again, then cut into 1/2 inch lengths.

2.  In a medium bowl,
dress carrot greens with sesame seeds, soy sauce, sake, and sugar.  Allow greens to sit and marinate at least 1
hour before serving.