the great garlic scaper
It is officially garlic scape time!! I am so in love with garlic scapes. I have enjoyed them for years as part of the treasures of my Mom’s local CSA. And I have searched for them at local farmer’s markets. But this is my first official year growing garlic, and the scapes are ready to be picked (or cut in this case)!
My hardneck garlic formed squiggly garlic scapes!
Smells like garlic.
The scape forms as this hard squiggly tendron. And by cutting the scape, it allows the garlic plant to focus all of its energies and efforts on making a nice, fat garlic bulb. And the scape is so yummy for cooking with its chivey garlicy ways. So I cut my first scape this weekend. It oozed this awesome, pungent garlic juice when I cut it.
Here is the first scape, fresh from the garden to the cutting board.
And I kid you not. Five minutes after I had cut the scape, here is what happened next:
Dude, my scape got a full-on erection.
Seriously, this is kind of the funniest things that’s ever happened to one of my vegetables. I guess it’s sort of like garlic scape rigor mortis.
So then I had to dice it up.
I later sauteed the garlic scape with radishes from the garden.
And more ready-to-pick broccoli rabe.
I prepared both a marinade for some organic chicken breasts to grill, and a sauce for the saute, made with freshly-squeezed orange juice and pulp, olive oil, champagne muscat vinegar a la Trader Joe’s, low-sodium soy sauce, freshly ground black pepper, and home-grown cilantro from the garden.
I let the chicken marinate for an hour or so while I got everything else ready to go.
I sauteed the scapes and radishes while the chicken was grilling, and added the broccoli rabe stalks and leaves to the mix for about 6–7 minutes to get them to wilt a bit. They cook down easily and quite lovely.
Sauteed broccoli rabe, radishes, and garlic scapes with the citrus soy olive oil cilantro sauce.
I used some of the marinade on the chicken while it was grilling and also for some grilled red pepper and asparagus.
The combination of citrus (acidic) and olive oil kept the chicken ridiculously moist and yummy. Having a hot grill helps, too.
And here was the finished dish! It was excellent. It is so rewarding to cook simple, delicious meals using ingredients from the garden. I can’t wait to keep experimenting!
Grilled chicken breasts, red peppers, and asparagus with sauteed broccoli rabe, radishes, and garlic scapes.
Tags: broccoli rabe, cilantro, gardening, garlic scape, gratitude, herbs, organic, radishes, spring
This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 1:35 am and is filed under Cooking Adventures, The Growing Season. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
8 Responses to “the great garlic scaper”
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Delicious! I’m going to have give garlic scapes a try in my ever-growing patio container garden. Also, you are 100% correct about the importance of a hot grill for searing meat and keeping the juices in and the meat tender and juicy–that is probably the most common amateur grilling mistake because it is counter-intuitive to think that a hotter grill won’t burn the food.
Hi Tim! I wonder how growing garlic works in the warmer Las Vegas weather? Because it is a bulb, I planted my seed garlic cloves last November and they wintered. It would definitely be an interesting experiment. Could you theoretically grow it year round? Thanks for the grilling tip. I love a hot grill. :)
Ok, I hope by next summer to grow my own scapes. Until then, I’m glad to have easy access to the farmer’s market. This post was an awesome read and your meal looked amazing. Scapes make awesome pesto too!
The hardest part about growing garlic (and scapes!) is saving a bulb to plant for later… I wanted to use it all up last fall. :) You are super fortunate to have such a great selection of produce from the farmer’s market. I loved your post about garlic scape pesto. Sounds super delicious. I will have to go to the farmer’s market in town and get more scapes since I *only* grew 4 this year.
Chillin and grillin. My favorite pastime!!!
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