Summer Recipe: Pesto with Garlic Scapes and Dill

These days, most of my time in the garden has been spent observing and weeding (lots of weeding!).

I have a big garden outside of the veggie patch and weeding is a fact of life for us right now.

But I find it soothing.

Spending time in the garden is a great time to listen to a podcast or music (which I do on occasion) but many times I listen to nothing but what’s around me: the birds chirping and the leaves rustling.

It’s funny when I worked in the city over time I decided not to listen to music on the bus and subway because I loved to listen and observe.

I think it’s an important part of life to know what’s going on around us.

Ok back to the veggies! What I observed this week was that growing dill is nuts!

The dill was the garden when we moved in and it was taking over. We removed a lot of it and it’s still coming up in droves. I’ve already picked a bunch and sold it (hmmm maybe I’ll start a dill farm?).

The other cool observation is watching how garlic grows.

Right now the garlic I planted in November is tall and mighty and is now showing off their garlic scapes. You may see garlic scapes at the farmers’ markets right now or in your veggie box.

I clipped a bunch of garlic scapes to make pesto and for good measure, I threw in some of that dill (I added some other veggies too you might be surprised to see!).

So this week’s Recipe from the Garden is Dill + Garlic Scape Pesto!

You can have it with pasta, or rice; plopped onto a salad, or eggs, or thinned out to be salad dressing. I had it with steak. 

Print Recipe

Dill + Garlic Scape Pesto

Prep Time5 minutes mins

Course: Dip

Keyword: dip, garden, garlic scape, pesto, salad dressing

Equipment

• 1 Food processor

Ingredients

• 2-4 garlic scapes roughly chopped
• 1 cup spinach roughly chopped
• 3/4 cup dill roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup fresh basil
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 small zucchini
• 1/4-1/2 cup walnuts You can use sunflower seeds or hemp for a nut free version
• Juice of half of a lemon
• 1-2 tbsp nutritional yeast or parmesan
• 1 tsp salt I used Redmond Real Salt
• 1 splash cold water

Instructions

• Throw everything but the water into a food processor and run it, scraping down the sides as needed.
• Add a bit of cold water as it's running. This helps to keep down the heat of the machine and adds a bit of liquid to the pesto.

Notes

Makes about 1.5 cups. Store in an airtight container for about 4 days. Freeze in cubes for about 3-5 months. Thaw as needed.

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P.P.S.: Check out my Salads + Bowls Recipe book for awesome recipes this summer!