The day I plant basil starts, I crave creamy pesto. Although I often sample a couple of leaves after I cover the roots with soil, the plants won’t be large enough to snip for Garden-Fresh Basil Pesto until July. So I satisfy my pesto craving with earlier crops: pea shoots and garlic scapes.
Once shell, snap and snow pea seeds sprout along their trellises, I monitor the growth of their delicate shoots and tendrils. When densely planted seeds grow about 6 inches tall, I pinch off the crowded plants at soil level, giving their neighbors more room. As the remaining plants grow, snipping off the tender tops – stems, leaves and blossoms – makes them bushier lower down the plant, so they still produce loads of peapods. This pruning also keeps the vines from overgrowing their trellises.
All edible pea shoots taste delicious in pesto or tossed into a salad, so ask for them at a farmers market if you aren’t growing peas. If the stems seem too coarse to process smoothly, use just the leaves and curly tips. Don’t substitute sweet pea tendrils; these are not edible.
The first pea shoot harvest tends to be too early for garlic scapes, so I make my initial pesto batch with the “wild” garlic that I let volunteer in my flower beds every year to deter deer and pests. Garlic cloves taste much stronger than scapes, and too many overpower the grassy, mild pea flavor of the shoots. For a one-to-one garlic scape substitute, try tender garlic chives. Garlic chives and scapes become increasingly fibrous as they grow, so clip young ones to avoid splintery pesto. If using garlic scapes, trim off and compost the flower bud and the grassy tip above it and coarsely chop just the remaining stem.
Unlike garlic cloves, garlic scapes won’t break down easily with a mortar and pestle, so puree them in a food processor for pesto and Garlic Scape Aioli. High-speed blending makes extra-virgin olive oil more bitter, so whisk it in by hand, using just enough to make the pesto creamy.
Pea Shoot Pesto
Makes 2 to 2-1/2 cups
1-1/2 cups coarsely chopped garlic scapes or 2 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons pine nuts
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1-1/2 cups pea shoots
1-1/2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste
Pinch of freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
2-4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
In a food processor, combine the garlic, pine nuts and Parmesan and process until finely minced. Add the pea shoots, lemon juice, salt and pepper and blend until the shoots are minced, scraping down the work bowl sides as needed. Drizzle in the sunflower oil and puree the pesto until smooth.
Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and whisk in enough olive oil, a tablespoon at a time, to make the pesto creamy. Use fresh within a couple of days or spoon into cube trays or small containers and freeze.
Julie Laing is a Bigfork-based cookbook author and food blogger at TwiceAsTasty.com.