Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The Great Garlic Scapes!

Here's some CSA advice for you: when in doubt, ask the farmer!

Last year, I was never overly pleased with my garlic scape adventures. I mean, some turned out pretty good, but nothing I was super excited about getting to eat again this year. So at the pick up this past week, I mentioned to one of the farmers that I wasn't sure what to do with the garlic scapes. He gave me the PERFECT advice, so here it is for you!

Garlic Scapes, a la Waltham Fields Community Farm Farmer
AKA Grilled Garlic Scapes



Ingredients:


Garlic Scapes (I think I used about 15 scapes)
A tablespoon or so of olive oil
A pinch of salt (I splurged and used some fleur de sel)

Directions:

Trim the very thin, skinny end of the garlic scape off. It'll just get burned, and the farmer told me it wasn't the tasty part anyway.

Toss the scapes in olive oil and sprinkle with salt.

Transfer to a grill basket and grill until they begin to caramelize. Don't go too long...they're not that good if they start to char!


These were SO good. I mean, so, so, so, so good. Mildly garlic-y, a slight reminiscence of asparagus, and a singular deliciousness that made me wish I had a zillion more garlic scapes.

These were great eaten straight off the grill, and I think this is also the way to go to prepare garlic scapes for use in other recipes. Mincing the grilled scapes and adding to garlic bread would be excellent. Or adding to stuffed squash, or a salad, or quinoa, or just about anything. Yum!!!

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You can see in the picture that we also had some grilled pork chops we'd picked up at the Waltham Farmer's Market. Also delightful! My favorite part of the meal wasn't in the picture, though: the salad. It didn't seem worth taking a picture, as it was just a standard salad of the stuff from our CSA distribution: arugula, red leaf lettuce, baby carrots, and sugar snap peas, plus some hot house tomato we'd gotten at the farmer's market. Drizzled with some Cindy's Kitchen Wild Maine Blueberry Dressing. It was just a simple salad, but every part of it was perfection. It's really greens season now. If you don't belong to a CSA, run out to a farmer's market and get some lettuce and other greens. It's amazing how much more delicious it is at this time of year!

2 comments:

  1. This sounds similar to what our farmer gave us a recipe for garlic scapes. We did pan fried in olive oil with brown sugar and white wine. I had the proportions a bit messed up so it wasn't a runaway hit but definitely good.

    I will try this one over the weekend since we will be grilling some steak tips I picked up!

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  2. I am having a love affair with garlic scapes right now and can't wait to try them this way! Stay tuned for another garlic scape recipe, coming soon to a blog near you!

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