garlic scape pesto

with this EXTREME spring of a summer... it's raining again... I am harvesting bumper crops of the cool weather veggies, while the cucumber plants shiver in the damp cold!
Our garlic is looking fantastic. We just harvested the last of the garlic flower buds, (called scapes) so I am anxiously awaiting enough hot weather that we can dry the bulbs later in the month.
There's not enough sun to "make hay while the sun shines", so we'll harvest scapes in the rain! The top flowery part is good if you cut off the tip, and the long stem is delicious baked with a little olive oil & salt wrapped in foil, or chop it and use it in stir-fries or other places you used onion and garlic.
Be sure to break off the woody end, like you would asparagus spears.

Garlic Scape Pesto

1 cup of garlic scapes chopped coarsely
1/3 cup walnuts
1/2 cup olive oil
1/3 cup grated soy Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp salt
black pepper to taste

Put the garlic scapes and walnuts in the food processor or blender. Process until chopped finely, slowly adding the olive oil, and scraping down the sides of the blender with a spatula as you go. Pour into a bowl and stir in the "cheese", salt and pepper.
I also blended just coarsely chopped scapes with olive oil and put them in freezer bags and froze them flat. When I run out of fresh scapes we will be able to break off chunks to add to recipes for that amazing flavour year round. 

3 comments:

  1. Hi, just found your very interesting blog via Slow Coast...

    I grew garlic for the first time and loved those scapes. I grilled mine but the top ends were quite tough, next year I will make the pesto as per your recipe.

    Margaret

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  2. The 3 keys to great scapes
    1. Avoiding the tough ends by treating them like asparagus and snap off the woody part, just eating the bud & the stem that stays behind.
    2. Once the bud has opened, they still must be removed from the garlic if you want the bulb to get bigger, but they will be too tough to eat.
    3. Scapes will stay fresh in the fridge for a long time, but they slowly get tough, so eat them sooner rather than later.
    enjoy! thanks for reading my blog
    nicole

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  3. Thank you for your garlic scape recipe... sounds great. hope to try it when I come across scapes again (since I haven't grown garlic yet).

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