I love pastry. All my favourite things are made with pastry; sausage rolls, pies, cinnamon rolls…. now I can add this delicious, super simple dish to that list.

I have made variations of this for a while (usually with a red pepper pesto) but I was experimenting with a pistachio pesto I make and it worked incredibly well. I thought i would share this with you.

Serves 4 as part of a main dish, or 6-8 as a starter

Ingredients
For the Pesto
100g pistachios
Handful of basil
Handful of mint
60ml olive oil
100ml water (add slowly to change consistency)
For the topping
200g Carrots – baby carrots halved or carrot batons
200g parsnips – thinly sliced
Agave Syrup
50g roasted red peppers
Basil leaves for decoration
Also needed:
Sheet of Jus Rol puff pastry

Method

1 – Preheat the oven to 180 degrees

2 – On a non stick baking tray, place the carrots and parsnips and cover with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. Cook in the oven for around 30 minutes. When cooked, squirt a little Agave syrup over them and place back in to the oven for 5 minutes until golden brown and sticky!

3 – Meanwhile roll out the puff pastry and place on a baking sheet on a baking tray. Fold the edges in approx 1cm to create a border and use oat or almond milk to coat the pastry so it goes nice and brown. With a fork, prick the bottom of the pastry to stop it rising too much (this makes it easier to assemble at the end!) Bake for 30 minutes until risen and golden.

4 – In a food processor, whizz together the pistachios, olive oil, mint and basil. Add the water afterwards to create the consistency you want. I usually use 100ml water so that it is easier to coat the pastry. You may need to transfer to a hand blender to really get it all creamy in texture.

5 – When the pastry is risen and golden brown, remove from the oven, top with the pistachio pesto and veggies. Then decorate with basil leaves and crushed pistachios.

We ate this as part of a main dish with hasselback potatoes. It was scrummy. We also reheated it the next day in the microwave for lunch. It took about 2 minutes to reheat and was just as nice the next day.