I am sure that no one in my family shares my love for Garlic Scapes Pesto.
I started making this stuff for the first time last summer on the suggestion of a friend. Previous to that, I would bring home a handful of scapes from my farm share, and with a puzzled expression, not unlike one you might see on the face of a country rube with a piece of straw dangling from his mouth in an old 1960’s cartoon, I would chop a few into a stir fry or onto a fresh green salad, to no accolades and with no desire to do it ever again.
I found many recipes for Garlic Scapes Pesto on the web last year. I credit this one to dorie greenspan with a couple of tweaks by me.
1 C (appx 10-12) garlic scapes, roughly chopped
1/2 C hand-grated* parmigiano-reggiano
1/3 C extra virgin olive oil
1/3 C toasted, slivered almonds
appx 2 tsp fresh lemon juice (squeeze it baby!); additional lemon zest if you like
1/2 tsp sea salt
freshly ground pepper to taste
Put all ingredients, save the cheese, into a food processor and chop until uniformly blended and to your personal preference for smoothness
After you have transferred every last bit of the pesto from the food processor into a glass (or ceramic) mixing bowl, add the grated parm-reg until well-blended
Put the pesto into an airtight container and refrigerate. Use it whenever you want, even on a midnight kitchen raid while you are watching a dirty French movie. I don’t think it will make you fat, even if you eat a cupful all at once.
I have found that the pesto stays fresh for around 4-5 days after it’s refrigerated. If you want to be like twinkly, you’ll double, triple, or quadruple the recipe (see note below) and you will freeze smallish portions for later use. Like next week and the week after because you will never get enough of this stuff. I dare you to try to have even one batch left when the snow flies. But wouldn’t it be loverly if you could make it last that long?
*after experimenting last summer with this recipe as well as with recipes for traditional basil pesto, I have found that adding the cheese into the food processor has a detrimental effect on both texture and flavor. Also, in typical twinkly fashion, I make huge batches of things so as to maximize my TIME SPENT PREPPING/COOKING to FOOD YIELD ratio. I freeze the garlic scapes pesto sans cheese (and so should you).
HOW DO I EAT IT? Well, I eat it on crackers for lunch, every day until it is gone. I eat it on wheat linguine noodles with nothing else or with cooked chicken added. I am eating it right now atop an Ak-Mak. You should do these things if you know what’s good for you and you should write to me with any new ways to eat it that are delicious.
And look, I’m gonna use the same goddamn photograph I used in yesterday’s post. That’s how little I like to work. I didn’t even reduce it like yesterday. God am I lazy.
I love this for two reasons. One I grow garlic. Two I hate pine nuts. Three I love pesto. Oops, I love this for three reasons!
Rufus–thanks for stopping by. I actually like pine nuts, but they are prohibitively expensive and don’t stay fresh very long, if they are even fresh to begin with. What do you do with the scapes from your garlic? I will check out your blog as well, twinkly
How is it that I overlooked this? I doubt, rufus, that you will ever see this reply, but I will visit your blog. That tomato pie recipe looks fabulous and better than the one I have from some 20-odd years back. Glad I discovered this ability to revisit comments so conveniently. Seems I learn something new about how my blog functions…sometimes.
How I miss the Brookfield garlic scapes! This sounds divine. I’ll see if our Farmer’s Market has scapes tomorrow. I love the idea of the almonds. I use Jeanne Lemelin’s (of Vegetarian Pleasures and the many variations) recipe for Basil Pesto, where she also advises to freeze before adding cheese, and says you can leave the pine nuts out without losing anything, or substitute walnuts. She also has a great winter pesto that uses spinach and dried basil.
Mary, I have a one of Jeanne Lemlin’s cookbooks and I have 2 fool-proof favorite recipes that I use. I will check out her Basil Pesto and winter pesto recipes! Can’t wait! I hope you find scapes soon. Are you traveling this summer? We may make an Ohio trek–not sure yet. Have a good one and thanks, as usual, for taking a peek here! Katherine
Hi Katherine, We made this for supper last night and it was terrific! Thanks for the encouragement. As we were preparing it, both my sons and I felt so uncertain, pesto without garlic? Oh right, it’s made with garlic. So we decided to try it out and add more garlic if we wanted. It was perfect just as the recipe is written.
I linked to this post at my csa recipe blog. Just in case you get lots of visits all of a sudden, you’ll know why. ; )
Laura, I am glad you liked it–you were brave to give it a go! I appreciate any links and look forward to visits from new folks. I know there’s a swear in the post. Sometimes I feel bad that that is the case when I plan on sharing a post, but it’s my writing and I suppose I should either learn to live with it and not apologize or delete the swears. Hmm. I was also thinking of putting your farm blog on my blog roll, but I didn’t know if you would like that. Do you want to garner more attention for your farm? I assume you have as many shares as you can handle, but then again, a blog is not the same as having a farm share and may be a way for folks to enjoy even if they are not members. Like me. I love your photos! Thanks for reading!