Recipe: Lemon Garlic Scape Pasta

We're in Week Three of Fresh Fork, and really enjoying the experience. I love menu planning once the newsletter comes out, announcing what will be in the bag that week. Sometimes we receive items that we're not familiar with, or that you tend to cook in only one way. So, I'm also loving the Fresh Fork recipes included in the weekly newsletter.

This one, we adapted from the Week Two newsletter from Fresh Fork.


Garlic Scape Lemon Pasta (4 servings)

Ingredients: 
1 lb pasta cooked, drained (I recommend Ohio City Pasta's Garlic and Chive Linguine.)
4 tablespoons oil
2 Tbsp. butter
2 bunches garlic scapes, chopped into 1 inch pieces
4 cloves fresh minced garlic
2 lemons- zest some outer skin and then squeeze out the juice
2 cups shredded hard aged cheese (Parmesan/asiago or similar)
1 1/2 cut-up fresh tomato
Fresh spinach
1 cup fresh mushrooms

Cook pasta, reserving some pasta water.
Saute mushrooms until half-cooked.
Add spinach and saute until wilted, and mushrooms cooked through.
Heat oil in a another saute pan to medium heat.
Add scapes and cook until bright green (2-3 minutes).
Add garlic, cooking until fragrant (1-2 minutes).
Add butter and lemon juice, cook until melted.
Add cooked pasta, cheese, tomato, and lemon zest (leaving some zest for plating), cooking until warm.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Use reserved water to gain correct texture if dry.
Plate, topping with spinach, mushrooms, and additional zest.

This dish was phenomenal. Very lemon-y, but we both love lemon and anything citrus. We also had some leftover Fresh Fork chorizo and bok choy from pairing with mussels the night before, so we heated them back up and threw it on top of this dish. I think it would work very well with any seafood too.

It was a winner, and will become on regular rotation for us. Enjoy!