Garlic-Scape Pesto

Garlic scapes are beautiful, they're delicious, and I don't think I'd ever tasted them before yesterday.

While searching for ways to use them, I found this recipe. I followed it almost to the letter, but I'll post what I did anyway.

Ingredients:
Garlic scapes (10), thinly sliced
Grated Parmesan (about 1/2 c.)
Slivered almonds (1/3 c.)
Olive oil (about 2/3 c.)
Salt

Using a food processor, traditional blender, Magic Bullet-type appliance, or immersible blender, blend the garlic scapes with the almonds, olive oil, and Parmesan. Add salt to taste.

Hint: Once everything is in the bowl of the processor/blender thingie, mix it up with a spoon before closing it up and blending it. I did this the third time I made the pesto, and it helped everything get blended up more quickly.

Comments:
This sounded so good that I made it three hours earlier than I intended to, just because I couldn't wait. And it is good--really, really good. It probably would be delicious on pasta, but I liked it just spread on hunks of ciabatta. I would've loved to keep it all to myself, but in the interest of preserving marital and filial harmony, I will share.

As Dorie suggested, I put some of the pesto in a mason jar and put it in our deep-freeze to save for when tomatoes are at their peak. If you do this and your jar isn't full to the brim, push plastic wrap against the surface of the pesto to keep the air off of it before you screw on the jar lid.

I covered the remaining portion closely with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge to share with Steve and the kids later. If that's not love, what is?

The first time I made this, I used an immersible blender. It got really bogged down in the thick pesto. I was able to make it work, but it definitely was work. That also might've had to do with the narrow, cylindrical blending container I used. The second time I made it, I used a Magic Bullet. That worked much better than the immersible blender, but I still had to stop several times to vigorously shake the blending container so that everything would get chopped up. I think a food processor would be ideal, but alas--we have none.

I'm really hoping (though it's unlikely) that we'll get more garlic scapes in next week's CSA, because I'd love to make another batch of this to freeze.

Three-hour-later update: Steve agreed with me that this was delicious. He also said it was a good thing I had already put away the other two-thirds, or else we would've eaten all of it. Liam and Annika took one bite each and weren't interested. (Oh, bummer--Steve and I had to eat more!)

Months-later update: We loved this on open-faced ciabatta-roll sandwiches with fresh tomatoes and basil, like this:

Not the best lighting for this photo, I know.

Forgive me--I took it in a moving car with the plate sitting on my lap.

We were in the car on the way to go camping,

but that didn't stop us from enjoying a gourmet-restaurant-worthy lunch.

We've also opened up a couple containers of the frozen pesto now that the colder months are upon us. We've enjoyed the pesto on bread and also on grilled carrots, as with the carrot-green pesto.