Garlic Scape Pesto Pasta Salad

I almost always serve garlic scape pesto over gnocchi.  I love gnocchi.  I love how it stands up to the garlic-y garlic scape pesto.  It's perfect together, if you ask me.  But, the best gnocchi in the world is from Fior d'Italia. They sell at Farmer's Markets all over the region, but I just haven't caught them yet this summer.  It's early, and most markets open this coming week.  So no gnocchi in the house.

But I had garlic scapes.  What to do?  I decided to make a cold pasta salad with garlic scape pesto.

I've previously posted a garlic scape pesto recipe, though quite honestly, I don't really follow a recipe any more.  Just toss into the food processor:  garlic scapes.  Drizzle in extra virgin olive oil and pulse until broken down.  Add in herbs of your choice.  This time I did fresh basil (lots) and mint (just a few leaves--it's a strong flavor so just use a few for a really interesting undertone).  Drizzle in some more olive oil and pulse some more until the herbs are broken down.  Add a ton of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.  Add more olive oil if you need.  Toss in a little salt and pepper and a splash of lemon juice.  Whiz it all up again, adjusting any ingredients if necessary.  I hate to give quantities, since it really depends on how many garlic scapes you start with.

Anyway, what I'm really posting here is a recipe for garlic scape pesto pasta salad, so I'm just going to assume you've followed the instructions above, or followed the link, or made your own scape pesto.   Oh, especially because I should note that due to nut allergies in the house, we do a nut-free pesto.  You might be nuttier than us, though.  Knock yourself out!  Throw in walnuts, or pine nuts, or whatever nuts you want.  I'm jealous.

Ingredients:

Pasta of your choice.  I used orecchiette today.
Prepared Garlic Scape Pesto
Diced avocado
Corn
Any other veggies you have around or think would be good in a cold pasta salad
Squeeze of lemon
Extra freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:

Prepare pasta according to package directions.  Rinse in cold water after cooking and transfer to a large bowl.

Stir in enough garlic scape pesto to get everything nice and green and coated.

Add some diced avocado and cooked corn.  Plus whatever other veggies you think go in a pasta salad.  Some cherry tomatoes would have been nice, but I didn't have any.

Squeeze some lemon on top and gently stir it all together.  Garnish with some Parmesan cheese.

Tzatziki with Marinated Souvlaki

When I got the email from our farmer this week telling us what to expect at our pick up, I was a bit disappointed. For the first time, something I really don't like was on the list: cucumbers. I know I'm not the only one who doesn't like them but unfortunately, I also hate pickles. I considered giving them to my neighbor but thought I should at least try to find something to do with them first.

After googling a bit, I came across a recipe for tzatziki, a Greek yogurt and cucumber dip. Duh!! I'm Greek and I can't believe I didn't think of it on my own. Well, this got me all excited, mouth-watering and the menu started coming together in my mind. I had some steak tips in the freezer - I can make steak gyros! Got some tomatoes in my CSA pick up so I can throw those in gyro. And since I'll be grilling the steak tips (aka souvlaki), I may as well grill the garlic scapes I got this week. And no good meal is complete without a side salad, so I could make use of all the lettuce and strawberries I got, too. Yum! All this inspired by the lowly cucumber - this is one of the things I love about eating locally. Seasonal inspiration!

Here is the recipe for the tzatziki, and yogurt marinade:

Tzatziki (from The Joy of Cooking)

1 cup yogurt (I used non-fat Greek yogurt)
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and finely chopped
1 tbsp dill, finely chopped
1 tbsp mint, finely chopped (I didn't have any so I doubled up on the dill)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 clove minced garlic
1/2 tsp salt

Blend all ingredients together - I used a simple blender. Leave in fridge over night to let flavors settle. Serve cold.



Cilantro Cumin Yogurt Marinade (from here) - with some of my changes

1/2 medium onion, grated
1 cup Greek yogurt
2 tbsp cilantro, finely chopped
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Mix all ingredients together in a large Tupperware. Add meat (in our case, 1.5lbs of steak tips), coat well, and cover. Leave in fridge overnight. Grill and serve hot.

Souvlaki with grilled garlic scapes

CSA lettuce and strawberries with Asian Sesame dressing

And here was our final product: Beef gyros with tzatziki and tomatoes

This was a perfect lunch for dining alfresco - finally we can enjoy some nice summer weather here in New England!

-Nicole

The Great (E)Scape Part Deux

Okay, not one, but both of my parental units are master gardeners. My entire life up to this point has involved gardening to some degree (herbs, vegetables, fruits and flowers too). But somehow, I've managed to avoid this delectable treat.


We were blessed with an abundance of garlic scapes in our CSA basket of goodies this week. I had already been eyeing this recipe and couldn't wait to hunker down in the kitchen for some quality time with my food processor. I pretty much followed the recipe with a few slight changes - I used white pepper instead of black, added the juice from half a lemon and totally bagged the drizzle of olive oil with salt on top when it was finished.


I consulted with my professional team of taste analysts (aka my colleagues) and it was unanimous. This recipe is finger-licking good (don't ask me how I know). This will definitely be on my list of favorites come garlic scape season each June. Oh, and I've already called the parental units to tell them how they've deprived me all these years.


Next - I can't wait to try WhataCard's recipe below for caramelized goodness!


Bon Appetit!

The Great Garlic Scapes!

Here's some CSA advice for you: when in doubt, ask the farmer!

Last year, I was never overly pleased with my garlic scape adventures. I mean, some turned out pretty good, but nothing I was super excited about getting to eat again this year. So at the pick up this past week, I mentioned to one of the farmers that I wasn't sure what to do with the garlic scapes. He gave me the PERFECT advice, so here it is for you!

Garlic Scapes, a la Waltham Fields Community Farm Farmer
AKA Grilled Garlic Scapes



Ingredients:

Garlic Scapes (I think I used about 15 scapes)
A tablespoon or so of olive oil
A pinch of salt (I splurged and used some fleur de sel)

Directions:

Trim the very thin, skinny end of the garlic scape off. It'll just get burned, and the farmer told me it wasn't the tasty part anyway.

Toss the scapes in olive oil and sprinkle with salt.

Transfer to a grill basket and grill until they begin to caramelize. Don't go too long...they're not that good if they start to char!


These were SO good. I mean, so, so, so, so good. Mildly garlic-y, a slight reminiscence of asparagus, and a singular deliciousness that made me wish I had a zillion more garlic scapes.

These were great eaten straight off the grill, and I think this is also the way to go to prepare garlic scapes for use in other recipes. Mincing the grilled scapes and adding to garlic bread would be excellent. Or adding to stuffed squash, or a salad, or quinoa, or just about anything. Yum!!!

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You can see in the picture that we also had some grilled pork chops we'd picked up at the Waltham Farmer's Market. Also delightful! My favorite part of the meal wasn't in the picture, though: the salad. It didn't seem worth taking a picture, as it was just a standard salad of the stuff from our CSA distribution: arugula, red leaf lettuce, baby carrots, and sugar snap peas, plus some hot house tomato we'd gotten at the farmer's market. Drizzled with some Cindy's Kitchen Wild Maine Blueberry Dressing. It was just a simple salad, but every part of it was perfection. It's really greens season now. If you don't belong to a CSA, run out to a farmer's market and get some lettuce and other greens. It's amazing how much more delicious it is at this time of year!

Lots of recipes

We started out this CSA week with a big winner: Garlic Scape Pesto. I followed the recipe given there. Well, mostly. Oh, heck, you know I made a few changes:

Ingredients:

7 garlic scapes, chopped into approx. 2" pieces
Fresh parsley (I'd guess about 2 tablespoons chopped, but I didn't chop it since it was just going into the food processor, so I'm really not sure)
3/4 cup olive oil
scant 1 cup Parmesan cheese

Directions:

Put the garlic scapes, parsley, and olive oil into a food processor and process until smooth(ish...it doesn't turn out perfectly smooth).

Stir in Parmesan cheese and serve over pasta. I choose gnocchi since it's a favorite with my twins. The pesto turns out very thick, so it was a good match to a heavy pasta.


A quick note about this picture: the sauce turns out to be a delicate green, and I just couldn't get it to show up on the camera. Either the overhead lights or flash blew-out the color too much, or without extra light, it was too shadowy. I took this picture standing near the window, holding the plate at about a 45 degree angle to catch the right natural lighting. All so you could appreciate the green color! Of course, then I was so worried about my food falling off the plate I ended up not getting a great picture anyway. But the color is pretty, isn't it?

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Served with the pesto, we had Garlic Scape Bread. Basically it was garlic bread where I used minced garlic scapes in place of garlic powder.


Looks pretty, doesn't it? Well, it wasn't garlicy enough for me. I'd add some extra garlic powder in additon to the scapes if I made this again. The delicate garlic scape flavor was wasted on garlic bread. Oh well. I mean, it was slightly garlicy buttery bread, so it was still yummy, but this won't replace my normal garlic bread recipe!

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Here it is, my first big CSA failure. Garlic scape soup. The recipe is all the way at the bottom of the page listed, if anyone wants to waste their garlic scapes on this substandard meal. It was gritty and unfinished tasting. TK and I thought it was a good soup base...it might have been good with some chicken and rice or veggies added. But as it was: uninspired. It doesn't even look good:

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But no worries, things quickly turned back in a positive direction. We went strawberry picking with Snickollet (and her kids and friend), plus both moms and baby of Two Moms and Baby. Taking my inspiration from those delightful strawberries and the latest CSA haul, I threw together this salad:


The salad contained spinach, lettuce, radish, purple scallions, hard boiled eggs, and sliced strawberries. What made it really outstanding was the homemade Strawberry Vinaigrette dressing. I followed the linked recipe, except I subbed about 1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon thyme for the tarragon, and I forgot about the sugar (oops! That was an unintentional oversight, but I didn't miss it...)

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And one last recipe, Roasted Spring Turnips, Snap Peas, and Garlic Scapes.

I found a recipe at a neat blog about eating locally (on the West Coast, but hey, we've got the same stuff here on the East Coast!) and followed the recipe pretty closely. I loved the lemon zest, and I used a lemon pepper herb mix. The garlic scapes were my favorite part as they got a little crispy in some parts and slightly caramelized. Lovely!