CSA Week 3 Recipe: Garlic Scape Pesto
6June 23, 2012 by Sara
Each week, I post either a cooking or canning recipe that uses the week’s featured CSA ingredient. Please excuse my chronic tardiness.
My friend Hilary sent me a recipe for garlic scape pesto just before our week 3 CSA box arrived. And lo and behold, I found 3 lovely garlic scapes in my box.
Unfortunately, the recipe Hilary suggested called for 10 scapes, so I was a tad short. To compensate, I added about a cup of fresh basil leaves from my garden. The result was great — the scapes, which are garlicky and fresh tasting, were balanced out by the basil. I served the pesto over fresh fettuccine, but this would work just as well with dried pasta.
Inspired by A Garden for the House and my prior pesto recipe, which is adapted from Everyday Italian by Giada DeLaurentiis
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup pine nuts
- 3 garlic scapes
- 1 cup fresh basil
- salt and pepper
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1/2 cup grated parmesan
- 2 pounds fresh fettuccine or one pound dried fettuccine, cooked al dente
- 1/2 cup reserved pasta cooking water
- 2 ripe tomatoes, seeded and chopped
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spread the pine nuts out in a single layer on a baking sheet. Toast the pine nuts in the oven for about 4 minutes, stopping to stir with a metal spatula about half way through. Keep a close eye on the pine nuts as they can go from toasted to burnt very quickly. Remove from oven and allow to cool.
- Rinse the garlic scapes and cut off the point end and discard. Chop the garlic scapes into 2 inch pieces.
- Combine the pine nuts, garlic scapes, basil, salt and pepper in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until finely chopped. With the machine running, gradually stream in the olive oil until the mixture is smooth and thick.
- Use a spatula to transfer the pesto to a bowl. Add the parmesan and mix well. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste, and add an extra drizzle of olive oil if needed.
- Transfer the cooked pasta to a large serving bowl. Add the pesto, heavy cream and tomatoes to the pasta and toss well. Add reserved pasta cooking water slowly, a splash at a time, as you toss the pasta; this will help to make the sauce creamy and rich; note that you will probably not need to use the entire 1/2 cup of reserved pasta water. Serve with extra grated parmesan.
I just got some scape and I’m not sure what I’ll do with it but this is a really good idea! I will have to try it out!
If you have more than 3 scapes (I was short) there are lots of recipes out there that call for scapes only (no basil). I liked the mix of scapes and basil, so that neither was overwhelming, but I’m sure that scape-only pesto would be good too.
I *still* haven’t been able to find scape so far
I’m not sure where you live or where you might be looking for them. I’ve never seen them in a “regular” grocery store, for that’s worth — but around these parts, I’ve seen them at the farmer’s markets and and the co-op. I do hope you can find some, they’re really great!
[...] The original recipe called for thin rounds of lemon on top, and I made the first batch that way but we found it to be too sour. So I eliminated the lemons on the second go round, and the results were great. The bread is really easy to make, and you can play with the herbs — I’m going to try some different combinations next time. This bread is really great served with a hearty soup like minestrone, or with a pasta dish like garlic scape pesto. [...]
[...] cup of pesto (can be traditional basil pesto or garlic scape pesto, or some other kind of pesto; whatever you have on hand or prefer will work just [...]