Spaghetti with Garlic Scape Pesto

Garlic scape season is short and glorious! The first arrive in May from our polytunnel garlic and then our outdoor garlic produces scapes in June - and then it’s over for the year….

They are such a great hungry gap vegetable. Delicious roasted, stir-fried, raw, pickled, or just chopped up and used in the base of dishes like garlic.

This pesto recipe is so simple and so good. I’ve used it on spaghetti here but you could eat it on anything!

Serves 2-4

200g-300g spaghetti
50g garlic scapes
30g pumpkin seeds
30g grated Parmesan or other hard cheese
Squeeze of lemon juice
2 tablespoons of olive oil
salt

1) Cook the spaghetti in a large pan of salted boiling water.

2) Meanwhile make the pesto. Put the garlic scapes, pumpkin seeds, cheese, lemon juice, olive oil and a good pinch of sea salt in a blender and whiz until smooth (ish).

3) When the spaghetti is cooked, drain but make sure to save a good bit of the pasta water.

4) Use some of the hot pasta water to the blender to loosen up the pesto.

5) Put the spaghetti back in the pan, add the pesto and stir it well before serving with a large salad of Laurelbank leaves.