One of my favourite things about the neighbourhood we live in here in Brisbane, is the farmers market that sits right on our doorstep on Saturday mornings. When living in London, the desire to buy the weekly shop at a market was greatly outweighed by the necessary 30+ min journey just to get to one. Here however, between 6am to 2pm each week I can walk 200m from our building to Davies Park, grab an excellent coffee (I mean, the coffee is excellent everywhere here) and get my fruit, veggies, meat, fish and eggs all for the equivalent of around £50. To put that into perspective, it works out to about half of what I was spending per week back in Blighty.

So as you may have guessed it, this delightful side dish came about as a result of a recent market haul. I grabbed a beautiful bunch of carrots - tops and all - with the intent of simply roasting them. But looking at those tops I thought there’s got to be a way of utilising them, instead of them going to waste. A fiend for pesto shall always be just that, and I quickly blitzed those leafy greens up together with the necessary ingredients that I seem to always have on hand (pine nuts, garlic, olive oil and of course parmesan) while those multicoloured carrots were roasting to sweet perfection.

This recipe makes enough pesto to use another time - try stirring whatever you have left through pasta, topped on eggs or as a base for your next sandwich.

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Roasted Carrots + Carrot Top Pesto

Serves 4 as a side dish

Ingredients

1 large bunch of carrots with tops

2 tablespoons pine nuts

10 tablespoons mild/light olive oil

50g parmesan, grated

1 garlic clove

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200c (180c FAN)

2. Remove the tops from the carrots and place in an roasting dish. Drizzle with two tablespoons of olive oil, and season generously with salt

3. Roast in the centre of an oven for 25-30 minutes or until tender

4. While the carrots are roasting, get to work on the pesto. In a blender add the carrot tops, garlic, pine nuts, a pinch of salt and the remaining 8 tablespoons olive oil and blitz until combined.

5. Transfer the pesto to a bowl and stir in the grated parmesan. Add more salt as needed, and an extra glug of olive oil if you see fit.

6. Once the carrots are roasted, serve with a few dollops of pesto.

Hello Sunday!

Obviously this is my favourite day of the week for many a reason. For starters I get to lounge around in bed in my pyjamas with panda eyes and messy hair without being judged, but mainly I love Sundays for the food. Being British it is expected that Sunday results in a roast, any kind of meat (or fish!) will do, it just has to be done in the oven. Be it a last minute kind of thing, a quick skip and a hop down to your local for a few slices of roast beef with a Yorkshire, or a premeditated and carefully calculated feat in the kitchen, the fruits of the pubs or your oven-slavery will undoubtedly be devoured in a matter of minutes. That is what Sundays were made for. They were also made for this.

Recently my amazingly talented brother was part of a production at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, so after 2 months when I heard he was coming back down to London for one day only I knew exactly what I had to do – Sunday lunch, a roast pork belly to be precise. What I love about pork belly when roasted is that it inevitably gets a pulled-like quality and it is juicy, melt-in-your-mouth hell yes kind of good. And the crackling. Ohhhh I can’t even talk about it without salivating.

Yes pork takes longer than other roasting options, but it is relatively fuss-free and absolutely worth it. Rub, roast, eat – simple.

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Roast Pork Belly

Serves 6-8

Ingredients

1.5kg pork belly

1 red onion

5 cloves of garlic

1 cooking apple

1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

Olive oil

2 fennel

300g carrots, left whole

1 lemon

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 300°c
2. In a pestle and mortar, grind the fennel and mustard seeds until a coarse powder.
3. Score the fatty layer of the pork, cutting through the fat but not into the meat itself. Either roast it flat or roll it up and tie it with butcher’s string – your call.
4. Rub the pork with olive oil, chopped rosemary and the fennel and mustard seeds and season liberally. Arrange the sliced apple, onion and garlic cloves in the baking pan and place the pork on top. Roast for 10 minutes until the skin starts to blister, then reduce the heat to 170°c and continue to roast for a further 2.5 – 3 hours.
5. For the fennel and carrots, add to the pan for the last 45 minutes of cooking, drizzle with olive oil, add the zest of a lemon and season well. Turn the vegetables half way through cooking.
6. Remove the pork from the pan, wrap in aluminum foil and leave to rest for about 15 minutes. Leave the carrots and the fennel in the oven with the onion and apple etc that the pork was roasting on to help them really caramelise and get even more moreish.
7. Serve with apple sauce and mustard, of course.