Garlic scapes
As I mentioned in my previous post, our bounty from week #1 of our CSA share included four garlic scapes. What are garlic scapes? Basically, they’re what grows out of a garlic bulb when you leave the bulbs unused for too long. Who knew those green plants sprouting out were edible? Not us!
Our CSA posts recipes for various vegetables, and I saw one for garlic scape pesto. I love pesto sauce so that seemed like the best use of the scapes. We didn’t have all the right ingredients on hand though but it wasn’t too hard to find a recipe that worked for us. I did a quick internet search and found this recipe from Dorie Greenspan. Dorie’s recipe required 10 scapes though, so I sent Josh to the 57th St. Greenmarket to pick up an extra bunch of scapes. I ended up with 9 in total and I figured, close enough!
This is what Dorie’s recipe calls for:
-10 garlic scapes, finely chopped
-1/3 to 1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan (to taste and texture)
-1/3 cup slivered almonds (you could toast them lightly, if you’d like)
-About 1/2 cup olive oil-
Sea salt
To prepare the scapes, I washed them and cut off the top flower bud part, then chopped the rest of the stalks into little pieces. It doesn’t have to be even since it’s all going into the food processor anyway.
We only had whole almonds on hand, which I toasted, and I tossed everything into the food processor for a whirl.
When I tasted the pesto though, it was sharper than I expected it to be. It definitely packed a garlicky punch, but was also slightly spicy. The Greenmarket scapes were significantly larger than the CSA scapes, so perhaps the older and bigger the scape is, the stronger/sharper it gets in flavor? I ended up tossing in twice the amount of parmesan cheese and twice the amount of olive oil to try to mellow out the flavor more.
The extra cheese and oil did help, and the pesto came out as a thick, creamy paste. I tossed it with some whole wheat rotini pasta and some diced cooked chicken. The pesto was a bit too thick, so I added some pasta water to help loosen it up a bit. It’s a neat little trick I learned from watching Lidia’s Italy. Make sure to season the dish with salt and pepper to taste.
Lastly, I topped the pasta with even more grated parmesan. There’s never such a thing as too much parmesan!
Overall we both liked the garlic scape pesto but I found the flavor to be a bit too nutty. I would reduce the amount of almonds next time, but that might just be a personal taste. Josh thought the garlic flavor was slightly too sharp, so another alternative would be to sautee the scapes for a bit to mellow them out. But making pesto is super easy, and we had a delicious and healthful meal on the table in less than 30 minutes. The scape pesto worked brilliantly with a nice cold bottle of pinot grigio, and Josh and I were both pretty happy campers.
