Garlic Scape Pesto

If you grow your own garlic, or frequent farmers' markets, you're probably familiar with garlic scapes making a brief appearance this time of year.

Here for only a short time each year, this delicious, tender garlicky delicacy is a must try. But if you have lots of garlic scapes to use up (like I do), sometimes it can be difficult to use them all up before they turn hard and woody!

My solution is this garlic scape pesto. It's a super easy way to turn lots of garlic scapes into a savory, flavorful vegan pesto recipe.

This recipe makes approximately two 16 oz jars of pesto, but a little goes a long way, unless you LOVE garlic :P These little scapes are packed with flavors.

We find that half a jar is enough to flavor one 500gr package of pasta, for instance. More or less to taste, of course. We find this combination potent, but somehow just right.

It's perfect for pasta, as a sauce in sandwiches, mixed into a tofu scramble, etc.

Notes for a successful vegan pesto recipe:

The thing to keep in mind about pesto, is that naturally it lends itself well to improvization and to tailoring things to your needs, your taste, and the ingredients available to you.

• You want to use tender fresh garlic scapes. Older ones harden up and become too woody for the purpose of the recipe.
• I used a combination of fresh herbs from my garden. Obviously understandable if you don't want to purchase so many herb packages, so feel free to use just one or two herbs instead. Basil and dill would be my two main go-tos here.
• If you want to cut down on some of the garlickiness, you can use more herbs and less scapes.
• I used walnut oil because I've just been loving it up lately. But you can also use olive oil if it's more accessible. I think mixing in a tiny amount of pine nut oil would have been amazing here, but I've not had that on hand in a while -- a girl can dream though ;) so just sharing for ideas in case you're lucky enough to have some on hand.
• The miso I used here is Hikari Miso organic white miso paste. Each miso is a little different in flavor naturally, so keep that in mind and adjust things to taste.
• And on that note, just in general of course keep in mind that flavors can vary depending on the ingredients used -- be prepared to adjust things to your taste. It's easy enough to do :)

You can scale this recipe up or down depending on how many scapes you would like to use up.

It will store well in the fridge for several weeks. Or alternatively you can freeze it for later use.

I do suggest adding it fresh to each serving of pasta, rather than premixing it for later use as pesto tends to dry up in pasta that is re-heated.

Last but not least, just want to emphasize once again that this recipe is more of a concept / roadmap. Feel free to play around and tailor it to your own tastes and needs. That's the fun of making pesto, after all :)

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