Recipe: Garlic Scape Pesto
by John Keleher, Two-Month Intern

A garlic scape is the top of the hardneck garlic plant that contains the flower. At Ecology Action we cut the tops off before they flower so the plant will have more energy to put into the bulb below ground.

So it was my turn to cook for the GROW BIOINTENSIVE interns, and we had all these garlic scapes lying around not getting any love. I immediately thought Pesto! Also, we have all these peanuts around because one of our fellow interns, Lamine, is from Senegal, and what is a Senegalese man without his enormous bag of peanuts? I know garlic scape peanut pesto might be a little "out-of-the-box thinking" as far as traditional recipes go, but that's how we do it here at Ecology Action.

Here's what I came up with:

10 garlic scapes, de-flowered
1/3 cup olive oil
Medium handful of peanuts
Salt and pepper to taste

Then you basically load up your blender with all the ingredients, and blend. If you're having trouble blending, just pour in a little water to help it liquefy.

As a friend told me, the great thing about pesto is that it's easy to doctor. I tried some side helpings with a little tahini and lemon mixed in but didn't like either as well as the straight recipe above.

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