Curly Girl Farm: Scapes: A New Way to Eat Garlic

"What's in Season" article from the second week in June:

Last year was the first time I ever grew garlic. Garlic is planted in October and harvested around the end of June. Last spring my good friend Amy asked me when I was going to harvest the “scapes.” Amy is definitely a “foodie”—someone who is really into cooking and eating using the best and freshest ingredients. She can whip up the most amazing things out of seemingly nothing. Since I’m the farmer and supposed to know these things, I had to sheepishly ask her, “What exactly is a ‘scape’?” A garlic scape is the flower stalk of the garlic plant. It shoots up through the middle of the plant and should be picked off before the flower opens so that the plant can focus its energy on producing a bigger bulb rather than on the flower. The best part is that you can eat the whole thing. It has a nice mild garlic flavor.

Amy tells me that garlic scapes are considered a delicacy in the Asian market. They cut them into one inch sections, sauté them, and eat them like green beans. I decided to try this method, sautéing them in olive oil and seasoning them with salt and pepper. When I served them to my mom, who is a notorious green bean hater, she took one look at her plate and said, “Oh, green beans. I don’t want these.” My mom taught Kindergarten for years and always taught her students that it was not good manners to say “ewww” when served a new food and to take at least one bite. I guess she forgot that lesson in this instance. However, she did try them when I explained that they were not, in fact, green beans but garlic scapes. She conceded that they were much better than green beans.

Garlic scapes are a fleeting thing since they have to be removed from the plant rather quickly. They are a fun thing to try—they kind of look like little green snakes, so your kids might get a kick out of them too. You can chop them up and use them in any dish in which you would use fresh garlic. My friend’s mom just used them in her meatballs last week. That sounds like something I want to try. Here is a recipe I made with them this week.

Garlic Scape Soup

· 2 Tablespoons butter

· 2 dozen garlic scapes, chopped

· 3 large russet potatoes, diced

· 5 cups chicken or vegetable stock

· 2 large handfuls of swiss chard (or spinach), stemmed

· Juice of ½ a lemon

· Salt & Pepper to taste

· A couple of dollops of sour cream

In a dutch oven, sauté the scapes in the butter for 2 min. Add the potatoes and stock and simmer for 20 min until the potatoes begin to break down. Remove from heat, add the chard. Puree in the blender (an immersion blender would have been great here, but I don’t have one.) Season with the lemon juice, salt, pepper, and sour cream. Can be served cold, but we preferred it hot.