garlic breath

Like fried morel mushrooms, fresh strawberry pie and spanish onion cheese dogs from Carol’s Corner… some of my favorite foods are those that come and go in the blink of an eye.  Garlic scapes fall into this same category.  Twisting, turning spirals of garlicky goodness, just the sight of them makes me smile.

When I worked at KenapocoMocha, I became known to all the local farmers as the one to call when you had something that you couldn’t sell; my kitchen became a safe haven for all vegetables, particularly the reject, mutant varieties.  Sorrel- a delightful little rhubarby-lemonish herb that no one around here has ever heard of… yes, please!  Fennel- the sweet anise-tasting bulbs that I normally drive all the way to Ft. Wayne and pay an arm and a leg for, but you’re going to give them to me for free because you can’t get anyone in our small town to try a vegetable that tastes like licorice… you betcha!  Green zebra tomatoes- sparkling golden globes with green stripes and a bright lemon-lime-tomatoey flavor passed over at the farmstand because their juicy green guts scare people… oh, yeah!  Fresh okra- little green pods that taste a bit like eggplant, but ooze a sticky, gooey potion that thickens stews like magic, but are evidently a little too much voodoo for this neck of the woods… absolutely!!  Celery root- the frog prince of the vegetable garden offers the fresh taste of celery but with the creamy, starchy texture of potatoes, sadly few can see past his dirty, wart-covered exterior… Sure, I love the ugly little guy!   Japanese eggplants- these little cuties can be found in various shades of purple, green & white and are one  of my favorite things to grill, but since they’re too small to slice up for the infamous eggplant parmesan, people don’t know what to do with them… don’t mind if I do!

Green zebra tomatoes- sparkling golden globes with green stripes and a bright lemon-lime-tomatoey flavor.

Japanese eggplants- these little cuties can be found in various shades of purple, green & white and are one of my favorite things to grill.

Down this same path, strewn with culinary misfits, my love of garlic scapes began.  Arlene Kindy, one of the most amazing and hard-working women I know, operates Kindy’s Organic Produce outside of Liberty Mills with her husband Cliff.  (They also run the North Manchester Farmers’ Market- https://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_325141357105, or you can call the farm at 982-2971.)  She called me and told me that she had these garlic stem-shoot-things, that they taste pretty good, and she’d heard that some fancy people cook with them.  Did I know what they were called, and would I like some?  Me: “SCAPES… and, YES!!!  I’ll take as many as you’ve got!”  (Which turned out to be about 10 pounds, and she charged me a whopping $10, but only after I refused to take them for free.)  Now, like all the above-mentioned vegetables, people are flocking to garlic scapes. (My local fennel & celery root dealer hardly has time to return my calls anymore.)  It seems that scapes, those curly, Medusa-looking oddities that a few years back farmers couldn’t even give away, have become this spring’s next big trend.

Another of my seasonal favorites, spring onions, nestled in a bed of curly-que scapes.

Scapes are the early shoots of the garlic plant, which farmers trim in the spring to encourage the bulb’s growth.  The have a smooth, mellow garlic taste- all the flavor of garlic without the spicy kick that you find in the cloves.  Scapes can be eaten raw  (they have a similar texture to tender asparagus), tossed with salads, chopped thinly and used as a garnish (like you would scallions).  They can be sauteed lightly with onions as a delicious base for just about any dish, or grilled like you would asparagus.  When they are abundant, I toss them in just about everything, but my favorite thing to do with scapes is to make pesto.

As food so often does, making garlic scape pesto brings back memories for me.  It was a beautiful, bright Sunday in June, and the coffee shop was closed, but I was in the kitchen making 30 quarts of Spring Vegetable Minestrone for the next day, and experimenting with this newfangled vegetable.  My dear friends, Jabin and Hannah Burnworth, were also in the shop, hanging some of Hannah’s artwork.  (KenapocoMocha uses their walls to dispay the work of local artists.  They’ve had so many amazing pieces of art through the years, but hers are still my favorite. www.milkhousestudio.weebly.com)

I added some of the scapes to the soup; I pureed some of the scapes with butter and herbs for an awesome compound butter that I would use to make garlic bread; and finally, I tried using it in place of the herbs and garlic cloves that I would usually toss into pesto.  That is when I realized I had something special.  The pesto, made with walnuts instead of pinenuts, was creamy and rich… it was earthy and grassy and fresh… but most importantly, it was wonderfully- but bearably- garlicky.  Without the burn that comes from raw garlic cloves, the scape pesto was so smooth, a garlic lover such as myself could (and did) eat it by the spoonful.

Serendipitously, the scape pesto and the simmering minestrone were finished at the same time… hmmm.  Before I knew it, I was sitting on the back steps outside the kitchen, the sun streaming down on me and a heaping spoonful of garlic scape pesto was melting into the steaming bowl of minestone in my hands.  A match made in heaven.  I asked my friends if they were hungry, and without giving them a chance to answer, I made them sit on the couch by the front window and served them each a fragrant, pesto-topped mug full of soup.  Jabin, a high school Biology teacher, had never tried a scape before and was floored by the pesto.  He came back the next day for more of the soup, and each spring I try to deliver a jar of garlic scape pesto to Hannah & Jabin’s door.

*To make your own garlic scape pesto, just take your favorite pesto recipe and use scapes instead of the garlic cloves that it calls for.  If you want it to be really garlicky, you can also substitute scapes for part of all of the herbs the the recipe calls for.

Scapes are perfect in marinara or pizza sauce.

They're also fantastic in hummus!