Roast lamb with carrot top salsa | Recipe of the week

Celery left long with the leaves, bunches of beetroot, muddy new potatoes or celeriac with the stem and leaf left intact will always end up in my basket over pre-packed vegetables. Bright orange bunches of carrots with plumes of green leaves are particularly hard to resist. You don’t have to throw away the edible leaves and in this recipe I add them to a salsa to compliment roast lamb (they also make a great pesto). If, like me, you don’t like to see too much waste in the kitchen then it makes sense to use all the vegetable bits available. Its a bit like vegetarian ‘nose to tail’ cooking in a way.

Ingredients, serves 4

4 loin lamb portions

1 bunch carrots

Teaspoon cumin

For the salsa

Picked leaves from 1 bunch carrots

Tablespoon chopped chives

Tablespoon chopped mint

Dessert spoon capers chopped

6 green olives stoned and chopped

75 ml olive oil

Teaspoon grain mustard

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

Method

1. Make the salsa first – blanch the carrot leaves in boiling salted water for 20 seconds, run under cold water and squeeze as much water out of them as you can.

2. Put the leaves in a blender with all the other salsa ingredients and blend together. You can store this in the fridge for up to five days.

3. Peel the carrots and split in two and put into a roasting dish with the cumin. Roast in the oven 220c/gas 8 for 15 minutes.

4. Season and roast the lamb in the hot oven for 10 to 15 minutes depending how you like to eat your lamb. Allow to rest for 5 minutes.

5. Spoon the salsa onto plates, cut the lamb portions into three and add to the plates with the cumin roasted carrots.

6. Spoon over the roasting juices from the lamb to serve.