The Box: Garlic Scape Pesto

What we like best about our weekly CSA box—aside from the surprise each Wednesday afternoon of seeing which beautiful vegetables and fruit we've received—is that it forces us to come up with uses for unfamiliar ingredients.

For the past two weeks the box has contained garlic scapes, the curly green tops of garlic

bulbs. The scapes are a bit too fibrous to simply cut up and sauté, so last night we made them into a pesto, mixing about a cup and a half of scapes with a half cup of basil, a half cup of grated parmesan, two tablespoons of pine nuts, two tablespoons of olive oil, a teaspoon of lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

We ate the pesto with roasted potatoes and some goat cheese. The sharp cheese blended nicely with the intense garlicky greenness of the pesto—this combination would also work well mixed with pasta or spread on grilled bread for bruschetta. It tastes just like summer.