Veggie of the month, part 2

Well, we tried the garlic scape pesto last night. It wasn't too hard to make, though Brian had to fiddle with the proportions a bit to get it to blend in our Magic Bullet. (Note: no, we didn't fall prey to an infomercial. We got it through Freecycle, thank you very much.) Since we were experimenting, he also decided to try making the polenta in our pressure cooker. Making it on the stovetop is a time-consuming process that involves standing and stirring for about half an hour while the mixture thickens, and the guide that came with the pressure cooker indicated that it could be done in about five minutes. Unfortunately, the result wasn't very polenta-like: it didn't cook down nearly enough and came out mushy and very sticky. It was still edible, just more like hot cereal than polenta.

So, I took my bowl of slightly soupy polenta, and since I'd never tried the garlic scape pesto before, I applied just a little spoonful it to start with. Took a bite, and wowowow GARLIC!

This stuff is seriously powerful. I ended up adding more cornmeal mush to my bowl to dilute the little spoonful that I had to start with. Mind you, I'm not saying it wasn't good; I actually quite liked it, but a little goes a really long way. The cup or so of pesto that we made could probably dress a couple of pounds of pasta.

So at this point, there's basically no chance that we're going to finish off this batch of pesto with the little bit of polenta that we have left. Most likely, we'll just put it in the freezer and bring it out as needed. The site where we found it says that it has lots of uses; I could see adding a bit of it (a very little bit) to a vinaigrette dressing, or stirring some into a soup, or topping a pizza with it. I'm sure we'll think of plenty of ways to use it—just not all at once.

This morning when we woke up, we both remarked that the taste of garlic was still very much with us. I don't think we'll have to worry about vampires any time soon.