This creamy mushroom and carlin pea soup with tahini and miso is a rich, savoury bowl packed with deep umami flavour. Earthy mushrooms blend with nutty carlin peas for a hearty, protein‑boosted base, while tahini adds silky creaminess and miso brings a subtle, salty depth. It’s an easy, nourishing soup that’s perfect for autumn and easily adapted to be fully vegan.

Carrot and fennel make a wonderfully unexpected pairing — sweet, aromatic, and earthy all at once. In this “beanotto,” creamy white beans take the place of rice, creating a silky, comforting base that soaks up the vegetables’ gentle warmth. The fennel brings it's aniseed aroma and the carrots bring their natural sweetness, and together they create a bowl that feels both rustic and refined.

What really lifts the dish is the carrot‑top pesto: bright, herbaceous, and just a little wild. It turns what could be a simple recipe into something vibrant and full of life, celebrating the whole vegetable from root to leaf. This is thrifty cooking at its most elegant — nourishing, colourful, and quietly impressive.

Don’t throw away your carrot tops if they’re in perfectly good condition — they’re edible and can be used to make a vibrant, herb‑like pesto that tastes fresh, green, and a little peppery. Their flavour sits somewhere between parsley and celery leaves, giving you a bright sauce that’s perfect for tossing through pasta, spooning over roasted vegetables, or spreading onto crusty bread.