SFist in the Kitchen: Garlic Scapes and Others
We geeked out on garlic last year, so we instantly recognized the twisty garlic scapes at the Grand Lake farmer's market last week. A scape is the stem that shoots through the middle of a bulb of hardneck garlic, the more flavorful subspecies of that aromatic bulb, which we'll cover a bit more in July or August.
Thin garlic scapes bend into graceful arcs as they emerge from the soil, creating a striking vegetable. The center becomes wooden as the garlic ages (hence the hard neck in hardneck garlic), so avoid garlic scapes that have straightened into stiff rods.
Good luck finding a cookbook that offers suggestions for the mild garlic taste of scapes. We treated them as stand-ins for green onions, slicing the beautiful curves into long wands or thin rounds and adding them to a dish just at the end. Too much cooking destroys the subtle but fresh flavor.
Photos by Melissa Schneider
We added wands of garlic scapes to a mix of fava beans and pan-fried fingerling potatoes, which we served under a leg of duck confit, and with a glass of the relatively light Ravenswood Cooke Vineyard Zinfandel. We also paired them with green beans and served the combination with a pork shoulder chop and a cherry sauce. Serve an elegant Pinot Noir alongside that combination.
We focused on garlic so much that we forgot that other onion family members also send up scapes. Mariquita Farms sells thick leek scapes with a Mosque-roof top. We used rounds of the mild ingredient in a simple chicken stir-fry, and then we added more to a rich tomato-duck stock that we served over pasta with fava beans and shredded duck confit.
How about you? Have you used scapes? What did you do with them?