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GARLIC SCAPES
Unless you've grown garlic yourself, you probably have no idea what garlic scapes are. I had never seen them in a
supermarket or run across them in cookbooks--but almost every CSA that grows garlic will also offer you garlic scapes. They
are a mostly unknown, but delicious by-product of growing hardneck garlic varieties. Garlic can be broken into
two groups--hardneck and softneck. Softneck varieties usually store better, tend to have more but smaller cloves, are harder to peel, and most of them do not
make scapes. These are most often the varieties that are produced commercially for supermarkets. Hardneck garlic
varieties do not generally store as well, tend to have fewer larger cloves, are easier to peel, and most of them DO make scapes. Hard-necks are often considered
"gourmet" garlics and are prized by chefs who value their rich flavor, large clove size and easy-to-peel skins. For these same
reasons, they are also widely grown by CSAs.
So what is a scape? Well, when the garlic is almost mature, it sends up a flowering stalk from the leafy part of the plant. The flowering stalk is called a scape. The scapes are cut off before the plant flowers so that the plant puts the energy it would have used to create the flowers into creating a larger bulb instead. The scapes are long tender and sometimes curly! They have a texture much like a green bean and we most often throw them in with our green beans almandine (see green beans page for a recipe) or add them to a stir fry (see bok choi page for a fried rice recipe). Just cut off the flower bud on the end and chop them into bite sized bits. They have a mild garlic flavor that is delicious. |