Garlic Scape Pesto Pasta

As promised, here's the first of what I hope will be several recipes utilizing my new (fair-weather) best culinary friend, garlic scapes. For those of you who didn't see my earlier article, the scape is the shoot that grows up off the stem of a garlic plant and contains the seed-pod. Good news is, you can eat the scape too.

I read several recipes for pesto sauce using garlic scapes before actually attempting it. I've loved pesto, in its classic basil form, for years, and in the end I went for a version very like the one I do with basil, only substituting an equivalent quantity of roughly-chopped garlic scapes for the basil leaves.

If you cook like I do, you will need (to make about 1 1/2 cups of pesto):



- 1.5 cups garlic scapes (about 10), seed pods cut off, cut first into 1-inch lengths and then roughly chopped




 - 3/4 cup reasonably good Parmigiano or Pecorino Romano cheese, freshly grated
- 1/3 cup (approx.) extra-virgin olive oil
- 2/3 cup blanched slivered almonds (you can also use the traditional pine nuts, but by the time you get done grinding them, nobody's going to know)
 - Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
- 8 oz (usually 1/2 pkg) of your favorite pasta


Add the garlic scapes to the bowl of a food processor with the chopping blade inserted. Cover and run until scapes are finely chopped (pause and scrape down sides with a spatula once or twice during chopping if needed). Add cheese; repeat. Add almonds; repeat, drizzling olive oil into mixture. The final mixture will be bright light green, and on the thick side of liquid but not mealy.

Taste the mixture and add salt and/or pepper as desired; so much fresh garlic will cause it to have a very peppery aftertaste and a distinct heat on the palate. This will be alleviated by its being added to pasta.


Turn the mixture out of the food processor and into one or more storage containers. Recipes I have read say it keeps for a week in the fridge; I would be willing to bet you can extend that by doing as I have with basil pesto and pouring a layer of olive oil over the top before refrigerating.

Prepare your favorite form of pasta; I made this with baby shells (conchiglie). When draining the pasta, retain a little of the cooking water. For 8 oz. pasta, cooked, use about 3 Tbsp. of the pesto, then add a bit of the cooking water and mix everything together. Taste for consistency and flavor and adjust.

We served this with bison sirloins we bought at the Bardstown Road Farmers' Market (another article in the making) and a simple salad of our own lettuce tossed with olive oil, white balsamic vinegar, kosher salt and fresh black pepper.