Summer pestos

We got a share from the sustainable urban agriculture setup and I have been doing a pasta with pesto once or twice a week this year and am loving it. Tonight garlic scapes with Korean garlic chives, locally made parm, pine nuts and olive oil from the olive farm in Sicily that my chef neighbor knows a friend of the owner and he brought a bottle over. Drizzled on bread that stuff, oh my word but I digress. Cherry tomatoes mixed in at the very end.... some plates of food you have and go you know, that might just be perfect.

To clarify- that was in pasta cooked with a minimal amount of heavily salted water so after draining a cup of that water and the pesto to finish with the noodles and the tomatoes and a glass of red wine on the table in the back yard... summer.

So you can make a naturally sweetened pesto by using almonds instead of pine nuts and then the parmesan, garlic scapes, basil and adding sun-dried tomatoes. For an extra bit of sweet, throw fresh peas in the water with the pasta for a minute just before dumping the pasta and draining out the water. Subbing in a Grana Padano cheese also adds sweetness.

Why would you want to sweeten pesto in the first place?