Market Flavours: Garlic recipes and ideas
I picked up some garlic scapes, mostly out of curiosity, and found out that they’re the green tops of the garlic buds that are cut off in order to allow the growing energy to focus on the bud itself. The scapes have a wonderful mild garlic-green onion flavour, and I’ve grilled them on the BBQ (tossed in a bit of olive oil first) as well as chopping them into pastas and salads as you would green onions. The bottom (cut) end is quite woody, be sure to cut the tough part off since it’s too fibrous to eat, although you could throw the ends into soup or pasta cooking water to add flavour.
I also tried out the wild garlic that was available earlier in the season. I used most of it to make a garlic pesto by blending it with olive oil and pine nuts, and chopped some into other dishes as I would with domestic garlic. Like the scapes, there’s a tough, woody core when you get near the bottom of the green part, which extends through the bulb. You’ll need to split the bulb and bottom part of the green lengthwise and extract the core before using.
I saw this recipe for Garlic Scape Pesto, although I haven’t tried it. If you do, let me know how it turns out.
You can buy fresh garlic and garlic scapes at St. Andrew’s Farmers’ Market on Saturdays, 9am-1pm, from O.K. Farms.
