Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Eating Vermont Part 2: Scape Pesto



As I've said before, if you want to have your cake and eat it too, eat locally and travel often. Maybe it's cheating, but when you dance between growing zones you can often enjoy your favorite short-season ingredients before or after they're gone in your home turf. Like scapes.

Scapes had just about run their course in Massachusetts when I headed up to Vermont, where they were just getting into full swing. While having dinner with some friends in Washington, they trotted out this totally electric pesto. Raw scapes are blended with olive oil and Parmesan, and that's it. The result is an intense spread that tastes great and feels like it's cleaning you out from the inside. Just the kind of thing you want in Spring. Or, if you find yourself in Zone 4a, mid-summer.

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Recipe: Scape Pesto

-garlic scapes
-olive oil
-Parmesan

Combine several snipped scapes with a few tablespoons of olive oil and a handful of grated Parmesan (or other hard, grating cheese) in a blender or food processor.

Blend or food process.

Continue to add oil until you reach the desired consistency.

Note: If you want to freeze it, leave out the cheese as it makes the texture funky.

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4 comments:

Debs said...

That looks lovely! I've been experimenting with how many awesome things can be made into pesto. I used flowering arugula in spring. Using scapes is brilliant.

Debs
Food Is Love

Aaron Kagan said...

I think YOU'RE brilliant! Good, fresh arugula has quite the bite, which makes it a perfect candidate for a piquant pesto. Is flowering arugula a variety or just arugula with flowers?

PS - My spellcheck doesn't recognize "arugula" - so many dotted red lines.

Debs said...

Just saw this. It was just arugula that had gone to flower. One of our farms was selling ginormous bunches of it cheap this spring.

There, now I've really confounded spell-check.

Debs
Food Is Love

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