Scape Escape!

Finally, after months of waiting, Colchester Farms has rolled out this year's CSA! As I begin my second year of exploring fresh, local produce and locally raised meats, I'm excited to restart the blog as well. This year we'll be looking into new ways to enjoy kale, exciting kolhrabi recipes and trying out food ideas from around the globe.

We recently hosted  group of friends for a back porch happy hour. Our friends Kevin and Heather, also Colchester CSA subscribers, brought along a bowl of garlic scape pesto. (Check out Kevin's local brewing project here!) So I decided to look around and try my hand as well, with delicious and visually pleasing results!

Garlic scapes are the "flower stalks" of regular hardneck garlic. Not only are they gorgeous and twisty (see below) but they have recently become very popular with food bloggers and New York farmer's markets. I had never seen (or heard of) garlic scapes until last year's farm share, where we were inundated with them from week one. With my husband's family from Texas visiting the Eastern Shore this weekend, it felt like the right time to introduce a wider audience to our local food adventure!

After searching many garlic scape pesto recipes, I decided on one from the ever-popular Epicurious.com. While this pesto was presented with pasta it seemed to be perfect for serving with chips as well. And so it turned out. Delicious!

The list of ingredients is spare and simple:

Scapes, fresh parmesan, pistachios, salt and pepper, and olive oil.

From there is was a matter of minutes to rinse the scapes, grate the cheese and measure out the pistachios.


Once done, it all went into the amazing Kitchen Aid food processer (thanks Mom!) for a twirl.

This yielded a very fragrant  and gritty looking mixture to which I (a bit blurrily) added a steady stream of olive oil.

In the end, we created a scrumptious, spicy and very healthy dip for our pre-dinner cocktail hour, which we enjoyed as we watched the first few lightening bugs explore the back yard.

Try the recipe (linked above) and let me know what you think!