Garlic Scape Pesto

Most people I know don't really know much about garlic scapes. I, myself, learned what they were from a colleague at the school I taught at about 2 years ago. From what I understand, it is a flowering stem of the garlic plant that is removed from the plant so that the garlic bulbs can get more nutrients. Something like that, anyway. Think of it like a garlicky cousin to the green onion or chive. A few weeks ago, I was at the local farmers market, and found them for very cheap, so I had to buy them. 

They stayed in my fridge for a quite some time, and as you can see, they surprisingly did not go bad. I used one or two here and there in an omelette or on pizza, but didn't really have a good use for the whole bunch. Then I saw this recipe for Garlic Scape Pesto on Cindy's blog, hunwhatsfordinner.blogspot.com and decided it would be the perfect thing to do. I changed it up and made it my own, as we all do, but the recipe for the basic pesto is the same, so check it out for the details.

The ingredients here are good, basic ingredients: Fresh parmesan, garlic scapes, olive oil, pine nuts (I only had a few pine nuts so I topped them off with raw almonds), olive oil, salt and pepper. I did everything in my trusty old food processor, which is a big plus. This is what it turned out like after I drizzled in all the olive oil. I love the colour. I then tasted it, and knew I'd want to use it in more than one part of my meal, but also knew that if I used it all in the same way, it would become redundant. 

So I took out a few spoonfuls, and cleaned up some regular mushrooms, but left them whole. I added a few tablespoons of the pesto to them, and let them hang out for a while. 

Then I went out to my balcony and grabbed a handful of basil and chives. I threw them into the mixer, and mixed it up. It just seemed a like a natural addition to me. 

I put 4 huge chicken breasts in a freezer bag (too many for the two of us, but made great leftovers, which I'll feature another time. Very exciting, let me tell you) and let them sit until I was ready to cook. 

You may know by now that I am a huge fan of the charcoal bbq. So it was only natural that I wanted to put all of this on the Q.

The mushrooms turned out ridiculously well. The pesto seemed to create this sort of coating, almost like as though they were breaded but much softer... hard to describe. Maybe the best mushrooms I've ever had.

We served this all up with Greek Horta, which you can check out here, a few cherry tomatoes from the garden, and I had some baguette left over so I put a little olive oil on that and stuck it on the bbq too. Needless to say, there was wine involved... This was one of my favourite meals I have made in a long time. My husband back-handedly commented something to the effect that he thought the meal was above us because it was so freakin' good. I take that as a good thing. It was outrageously good.... I hope you'll try it! Have a great day!