With so many seasonal ingredients to choose from it’s hard to decide what to buy and, in some cases, what to prepare once you bring a new ingredient home. I recently visited the weekly farmer’s market and came across a big basket of beautiful, squiggly garlic scapes. I wasn’t sure what to do with them, but I had a conversation with a co-worker who inspired me to just go home and experiment.
Not knowing much about scapes I did a bit of ‘digging’ so I would better understand them. Interestingly enough, all garlic creates stems but only one variety, called ‘Rocambole [1]’ garlic, offers us these lovely, curly scapes.
Lately there have been various versions of pesto-like sauces [2] swirling around the office so I figured I would try my hand at a new one to continue on this trend and make use of my newfound ingredient! Having made pesto and other similar sauces in the past I followed the same path in my preparation. But there was a game-time decision that took this pesto to another place….are you ready?
I threw in grape tomatoes and a half of an avocado [3]!
This surprising new pesto was tangy, creamy, and the perfect topper for our evening salad. The pesto could also be great on some whole-wheat pasta or spread on a lunchtime sandwich or wrap.
Garlic Scape Pesto
Makes about 1 ½ cups
Ingredients:
¼ cup cashews or other nuts
½ pound garlic scapes, washed and roughly chopped
½ bunch cilantro, thoroughly washed and roughly chopped
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil [4]
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons water
1 small tomato or 6 grape or cherry tomatoes
½ ripe avocado
Salt
Directions:
Put the raw cashews in a blender and pulverize them. Add the garlic scapes and cilantro, along with the olive oil, lemon juice, and a bit of water to thin it out.
Once pureed, add the grape tomatoes and the avocado half, blend for another minute, and season with salt to taste.
—Rachel
Links
[1] http://gardening.about.com/od/herbsatoz/a/What-Are-Garlic-Scapes.htm
[2] https://oldwayspt.org/blog/c-cilantro
[3] https://oldwayspt.org/resources/12-ways-use-avocados
[4] https://oldwayspt.org/resources/good-food/olive-oil-101
[5] https://oldwayspt.org/categories/recipe