Garlic Scape Pesto
This recipe is a slightly modified version of Karen Bertelsen’s Garlic Scape Pesto and it is “knock your socks off” good. Thanks, Karen. Hey look, I did stuff (ha). June is garlic scape season and if you are lucky enough to grow your own garlic now’s the time to make this stuff. Apparently, it can be frozen although we used most of it so there wasn’t any left to freeze, that’s how good it was. In this case, I used it to finish off new potatoes in the oven that had been boiled for 10 minutes and smashed flat(ish). Just put a dollop of the pesto on top of each smashed potato and sprinkle on a bit more grated Parmesan and bake on a cookie sheet for 10 minutes. The pesto was so good we used the rest as a condiment. It’s super garlicky so there’s that, but if everyone has some, who cares.
Ingredients
- 12 garlic scapes, rough chopped.*
- 1 bunch of basil leaves
- 4 cup toasted pine nuts (or walnuts)
- Zest of 1 lime and the juice of 2 (or you can use lemons…we had run out so limes worked perfectly well)
- 1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
- healthy grind of black pepper
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 1/2 cup olive oil (we were using this on smashed roasted new potatoes so I cut the oil in half)
Method
*If you are cutting your own scapes, cut the scape about 1 inch (2.5 cm) above the last set of leaves at the top of the garlic plant. Don’t worry about hurting the plant. Cutting the scapes after they’d done a twirl (they are curly) actually helps the plant to send its energy into growing the bulb rather than producing a flower. Once the stocks have straightened it’s too late as the scapes will be too fibrous to use for this recipe. Give the scapes a wash if necessary and pat them dry.
- Toast pine nuts in a dry pan over medium/low heat until the brown – watch them so they don’t burn. Remove from the heat and let them cool while you prep the other ingredients.
- Rough chop the scapes and put them in a food processor.
- Add the remaining ingredients, except the oil, and pulse until you start to get a rough paste.
- Slowly drizzle in oil with processor running.
- Correct your salt and pepper put in a jar to let the flavours meld.
Serve over roasted vegetables or on fresh pasta with extra freshly grated Parmesan. The photo features Chicken Shawarma as the main.