I will gladly eat the almost-flowering buds of a hardneck garlic bulb. I would also eat their flowers, but I haven’t seen them in bloom yet.
I saw these wild scapes at the farmers’ market for 2 bucks and needed to have them. They reminded me of the strange curl of my hair, each thick strand curving in a different direction, looping dramatically each morning.
This bunch had about 18 scapes and I put them in every dish I could think of for the week. They are a tad bit less intense than garlic itself, but the garlic flavor is still clearly present.
The first dish was Lemon Scaped Pasta with Roasted Grape Tomatoes.
I filled my cast iron pan with cut scapes, slices of red onion, grape tomatoes, quickly sauteed in olive oil + salt and pepper, then roasted til tomatoes looked ready to pop. I tossed this with thin spaghetti, arugula and spinach, lemon zest and a few squeezes of it’s juice. That’s it. Simple and bright. You can eat it hot or cold.
Next day we BBQed, and my side dish was a pasta tossed in garlic scape pesto with BACON.
That’s right. Crispy bacon took the place of the saltiness of grated parmesan that I did not have. I noticed with my first few posts that I sorta/kinda appear as if I am a vegetarian. Friends, I am not. In my food processor I put peppery arugula, spinach, scapes, fried bacon, walnuts and olive oil, blended well. It was the sort of intensity I was after.
For the rest of the week I added a scape or two to anything I’d normally put garlic in, which is pretty much everything. Soup. Stew. Pot pie (which I’ll write about next week.)
I thought this would be the first and last time I see scapes for the summer, and then I met up with Tory and Jon at the Brooklyn Grange and Tory handed me the last of ’em grown there. Oh, my heart. I happily carried them with me, along with two bulbous candy onions.
Also, on the Grange, we spotted us a beekeeper. Sunflowers. More chickens. More things to photograph. More to love.
Some of my favorite Saturdays have been spent with these two beautiful people.
After the Grange, we walked ourselves to Milkflower and had us a beautiful meal of blistered shishito peppers (my first time!). She warned me about the occasional spicy ones. Like 1 out of 12? Let’s just say I barely tasted our pizza that Tory and I split, (cherrystone clam w/ garlic and fresno chiles) but that squeeze of lemon wedge truly brought out all of it’s flavors for me and what I barely tasted tasted freaking amazing. I’ve never been disappointed eating there with them. And this time? We sat underneath the young grapes.
On my way home, my mom was visiting, and she sent me a text stating, simply, “I’m hungry.” Although I just ate, I was still very eager to use these candy onions and scapes, so I ran home and whipped us up a plate of braised london broil and salad. The onions here live up to their very sweet names, and roasted scapes will always add a much-needed touch.
If you see these loopy green scapes around, please buy them! I see no reason not to. It means no part of garlic goes to waste, not even it’s flowers, and I love everything about that.