Jun. 28, 2021
Cooking In Season
Salad Meals to Beat the Heat
In this recipe round up, I have gathered my best and most delicious summer salad meal recipes in one post, for days when it’s too hot to cook!
July 5, 2016
Garlic Scape Pesto
Garlic scape pesto tastes so delicious, with a different edge to it that standard pesto. It has a rounder flavour, which I find works beautifully in all kinds of recipes.
Garlic scape pesto is all the rage right now, at least for me. I love pesto, and this is my favourite kind. It tastes so delicious, with a different edge to it that standard pesto.
It makes use of an abundant but sometimes difficult-to-use crop. And if I’m going to the trouble of making Big Batch Pesto, garlic scape is the way to go: it gives much bigger yields than cloves of garlic.
If you don’t already know, garlic scapes are the green shoots of garlic that need to be clipped backed in May or June so as not to exhaust the developing garlic bulb beneath. They taste quite garlicky, but with less of the pungency and sharpness of regular garlic. I’ve previously talked about my love for garlic scapes here, and included several recipes for using them.
Garlic scapes can be used as a replacement for garlic in various dishes, but I find that it’s hard for me to use them up this way (honestly, I get so many scapes!). Enter pesto, which uses a lot of scapes in each batch, AND tastes amazing. I love this recipe: it makes a delicious pesto, on the mild side in terms of both garlic, but full of herbaceous flavour, making for a rounder pesto which I find works beautifully in all kinds of recipes.
It’s quick to make, freezes beautifully, and can be used in a variety of dishes, vegetarian or meat-based. I’m thrilled to have some packed away in the freezer.
Garlic Scape Pesto
Garlic scape pesto tastes so delicious, with a different edge to it that standard pesto.
Ingredients
250 ml (1 cup) chopped garlic scapes
250 ml (1 cup) packed basil leaves
250 ml (1 cup) packed flat-leaf parsley leaves
60 ml (1/4 cup) toasted pinenuts or sunflower seeds
60 ml (1/4 cup) grated Parmesan cheese
2.5 ml (1/2 tsp) salt, or more, to taste
1 ml (1/4 tsp) freshly ground pepper
125 ml (1/2 cup) extra virgin olive oil
to taste fresh lemon juice
Instructions
- Place the prepared garlic scapes, herbs, nuts, cheese, salt, and pepper in the work bowl of a food processor. Process until the ingredients are finely chopped, stopping to scrape down sides as necessary.
- Now, with the machine running, pour the oil through the feed tube until pesto comes together in a bright green puree. Stop to scrape down the sides as necessary. use more olive oil, if necessary, to achieve your desired consistency.
- Taste the pesto and add lemon juice and/or salt as desired.
- Pesto can be kept refrigerated up to 1 week, or frozen up to 6 months.
- TO USE THIS PESTO: the classic way of using pesto is to toss a generous amount of it with freshly cooked pasta or potato. It also tastes wonderful used as a pizza topping or sandwich spread, as a garnish for bean or vegetable soups, as part of a salad dressing, or as a meat marinade.
Hello Heidi. I too love garlic scapes but in the past when I process scapes for pesto the consistency is tough. Is this because the scapes are old? Are there only certain parts of the scape I should be using? I ended up throwing out everything last year 🙁
Hi Joanne,
That’s too bad! 🙁 I find it’s best to use younger, smaller scapes, and don’t use them if they are thick and tough. Garlic scape pesto will have a rougher texture than regular pesto, but it shouldn’t be tough. I hope it works out better this year!