This vibrant green kale, garlic scape, and pistachio pesto is all about simplicity.  Wanted to take advantage of the beautiful garlic scapes you find this time of year.  I used garlic scapes in this tasty soup the other day, but also had a garlic scape pesto in mind.

Just needed to figure out what else to put in my pesto?

There are any number of greens you can use in pesto — traditionally, basil or, perhaps something a bit less traditional, arugula, parsley, cilantro, chervil, mint, sorrel, spinach, and/or kale to name a few.  After that, you need to decide, nuts/seeds or no nuts/seeds?  More decisions — pinenuts (traditional) or, perhaps, pistachios, almonds, walnuts, or pumpkin seeds?  Toasted versus untoasted nuts/seeds?  Cheese or no cheese?  Smooth or rustic?  Prepared in a food processor or a mano (by hand) with a mortar and pestle?

I guess what I’m getting at is that there are a seemingly limitless number of combinations when it comes to  pesto.

Once you have some pesto on hand, it is extremely versatile and can be used in a myriad of dishes.  A few ideas…

1. Grilled cheese — with a gooey, melty cheese such as asiago or gruyere — and pesto;
2. Pasta with pesto;
3. Pizza with pesto;
4. Potato salad with pesto (in lieu of mayo).

Other favorite ways to incorporate pesto?

Pesto freezes well (in ice cube trays), so you can make a bunch of pesto when garlic scapes are plentiful, and enjoy it later in the season when scapes are long gone.

I topped some homemade mulitgrain (whole wheat, rye, spelt) sourdough walnut bread with this delicious,  verdant pesto.  You can find the recipe for the bread here.

While it is a bit of a process, the end result — a hearty, flavorful, rustic bread — is well worth the effort.

Garlic scapes are the edible green stem that shoots up from the hard-neck variety of garlic bulbs, usually in late-May to June.  They are cut off so the plant’s energy goes into growing the bulbs instead of the stem and the flowers, which will be dug up in a couple of months.  The scapes are tender with a mild garlic flavor.

In addition to garlic scapes, came across some shallot scapes for the first time.  Hmm, what to do with shallot scapes?