Garlic Scapes

Back to the garden - Soon after pulling into the driveway we were out perusing the garden.  A lot can happen in three weeks, and that includes weeds.  We had made arrangements for someone to water as needed and pick produce in our absence, but evidence of picking was hard to find.  We were greeted with an abundance of greens- romaine, butter lettuce, and red sails, spinach, swiss chard, and a nice, but a little overgrown, bed of mesclun mix.  We had expected the lettuce to be past it's prime by now, but were pleased to find that it is still quite nice.  The pea patch has produced a huge number of peas which are now quite large, but still sweet and tender, I suppose thanks to the cool damp weather that persisted while we were gone.  Our tomatoes look rather sad, the squash plants are not as large as we expected, and the cucumber plants have disappeared.  But, really, things look pretty good.

The garlic is nearing the end of it's growing season and most of the varieties have sent up lovely garlic scapes - that's the curly tendril-like stem which produces a flower and later seeds.  To obtain nice large garlic bulbs it is necessary to cut these scapes.  Fortunately, the delicate shoots are tender and mild and can be eaten at this stage of development.  I think that I'm a little late in picking them, the stems are a little large and some are tough, a week earlier would have been better.  That's not going to stop me from experimenting to see if how I might use these interesting morsels.  Garlic Scape Pesto seemed like a good idea to me.  I was right!  Here's how it's made:

Garlic Scape Pesto

Cut off and discard the flower end of the scape.  Chop the tender lengths into 1/4" pieces
In a food processor place:
1 cup chopped garlic scapes
1/3 cup of chopped walnuts or almonds ( I used walnuts)
3/4 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon of salt
 Process until the combined and the texture of pesto.  Add parmesan cheese if desired.  The pesto is delicious spread on fresh bread or may be added to pasta.  We have an abundance of overgrown oregon sugar pod peas, so I sauteed them with a few stems of the garlic and tossed it all with pasta.

I'm planning to make more pesto to freeze for later use.  A little goes a long way and unlike pesto made from basil, it keeps it's vibrant green color.  I'll freeze it in small portions for use in soups and pasta dishes next winter.

After all, you can never have too much garlic. . . . . .