Garlic Scapes: Get Them While You Can!

If you love garlic, you will love garlic scapes.  It's a short-lived delight, available for a couple of weeks early in Summer.  We always say it's what gets us through until the garlic bulbs are ready later in the summer!  Not familiar with scapes?  Lots of people aren't.  We took them to both the Friday Night Farmers Market and the Saturday Morning Market at Riverbank Discovery Centre this week.  A few people were delighted to see them; most asked what the 'curly' thing was!  Love introducing people to something new at the Farmers Market!

Garlic scapes are the flowering stocks of garlic plants.  They should be removed so that more energy goes into the formation of the bulb.  The upside to all that work is that they are delicious eating!  Milder than a garlic clove but stronger than garlic chives with a fresh, almost sweet flavor, this first cut will be very tender and awesome for fresh eating on salads, in a tuna salad, salsa and such.  They are also great for cooking, although they should be added later in the cooking as they are a little delicate.  Perfect for sautes, stir-fries, in omelettes; we diced them and put them on a pizza with shaved asparagus a few nights ago.  Yummy!  Later today, we're doing a garlic scape pesto from this recipe, which has almonds instead of pinenuts.  On the food blogs, they're pickling them!  Very useful for the garlic lover, but in another week they are all gone.  We'll have them at Tuesdays' Neighborhood Country Market, and the last cuts will be available at the Friday Night Farmers Market and Saturdays Farmers Market at Riverbank Discovery Centre.  Have you tried garlic scapes?