Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Garlic Scape Pesto

It's garlic scape season again!
Garlic Scape
A garlic scape is the flower stem of the garlic plant. As it grows it curls into a circle. Farmer's remove the scape at this point from their garlic plants in order to get a bigger garlic bulb. (Apparently if the scape is left on you get a smaller but longer lasting bulb.) The bonus is that scape is awful tasty.
garlic scapes
When scapes are in season we use them to replace garlic in recipes, chop them into salads & use them as a pizza topping. They have what I would say is a mild garlic flavor. We went a little crazy this year & had scapes from our own garden, from our CSA & from the farmer's market so I made a big batch of garlic scape pesto. I'll freeze individual servings of it to use through out the year.
garlic scape pesto

Garlic Scape Pesto
(adapted from A Mighty Appetite)

2 c garlic scapes, flower removed & green stems chopped
2/3 c slivered almonds (you could use walnuts or hazelnuts too)
1 1/2 c olive oil
1/2 c grated Parmesan
1 t salt
pepper

Put the scapes & almonds into a food processor & pulse until as smooth as you can get it. With the food processor running drizzle in the olive oil (It'll seem like a lot) & process until smooth. Stir or process in the cheese (I processed it in to get it more incorporated.) Stir in salt & pepper. Store in the fridge for one week or freeze.

About 3 cups
Grilled Garlic Scape Pesto Chicken
We rubbed some pesto under the skin of some chicken thighs & legs and then barbecued them for a tasty dinner. Our other immediate plan for the pesto is to use it in a potato salad.

If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://agoodappetite.blogspot.com OR at http://agoodappetite.com then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at katbaro AT yahoo DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author unless otherwise noted.
© 2007-2009 Kathy Lewinski

13 comments:

Maria said...

I've never had garlic scapes, I need to find some. The pesto looks amazing, one of my favorite things about summer!

Sara said...

Yum! I'm making some of this over the weekend for sure!! Thanks!!

Stacey Snacks said...

I made a scape spread this week too.
I had never seen them before until food blogs came along.
They were a nice summer treat.

Deborah said...

I'm so jealous of everyone's garlic scapes - I can't find them anywhere!

grace said...

add me to the list of folks who haven't yet experienced the wonder of garlic scapes. i must say, though, that your bowl of pesto looks scrumptious!

Justin said...

garlic scape? i guess i just learned something.

Katerina said...

yum! Almonds have to be next, I made my first garlic scape pesto last week using walnuts.

Giff said...

that looks great Kat! I had fun the other week with thinly sliced garlic scapes in my stir fry. Hadn't worked with it before.

Christina Kim said...

So creative! I love this idea to make it into a pesto, with so many possible uses!

Natalie Que said...

LOVE. IT. Such a great idea. Looks absolutely divine!

Peter M said...

It was a delight to try garlic scapes for the 1st time this year...I enjoyed a pesto similar to yours...nice nicely done chicken.

Alicia Foodycat said...

I am as jealous as hell of this. Our garlic started off well but the leaves withered and died before they got close to producing a flower!

Anonymous said...

It looks really amazing. One of the most common ailments garlic has is to treat cold. Garlic has many benefits in treating heart diseases. It also has the ability to control our blood pressure by thinning our blood. garlic provides insignificant amount of nutrients.Garlic can be used to treat high cholestrol, parasites, respiratory problems, poor digestion, and low energy.

Garlic Mantra

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