Saturday, November 12, 2011

Green Garlic and Garlic Scape

My favourite show, Mexico One Plate at a Time with Rick Bayless finally premiered its Season 8 in Buffalo and Toronto. I really don't know why it took so long, since in other PBS stations it's been playing since September!

Anyway, today's episode featured Green Garlic Mojo, which is basically "green garlic stalks" (pictured below) (lots of pictures of green garlic in this link).


Picture courtesy of Sophisticated Peasant

I had never seen green garlic stalks! They basically look like green onions, but apparently they are pure garlic. I was very intrigued by them.

I had heard of ramps before and I know we have them here in Toronto at the beginning of the summer. They are all the rage around here.

Not sure if we were talking of the same thing, I put a question to twitter. I now think that ramps and green garlic stalks are not the same because they have separate Wikipedia entries. Then again, someone mentioned that they are also called Garlic Scapes. According to Wikipedia: "Immature scapes are tender and edible. They are also known as "garlic spears", "stems", or "tops". Scapes generally have a milder taste than the cloves. They are often used in stir frying or braised like asparagus".

Looking for more information about green garlic and garlic scape I ran into 2 Sisters Garlic. Their Garlic and Garlic Scape recipes are highly recommended. They have recipes for Garlic Monkey Bread, Veggie and Chicken Pizza with Scapes, Summertime Herbed Chicken Pasta, Garlic Scape Carbonara, Garlic Scape Pesto, White Bean and Garlic Scape Dip, Simple Garlic Vinaigrette, Emeril's Roasted Garlic Vinaigrette, Sauteed Garlic Scapes, and Grilled Garlic Scapes. All the recipes feature garlic and green garlic (garlic scapes) prominently and look delicious!

7 comments:

Chef E said...

I tried garlic scape for the first time in making tepary beans from Arizona...love me some garlic in all dishes I make, and love Rick as well...great post!

Ann said...

Great post. I just found you and hope that you have more delicious posts.

Neilesh Patel (Recruiter for Food Manufacturing Jobs) said...

I came across your blog today and enjoyed it. Is it ok if we re-post some of your entries in our newsletter? I just think a lot of the food and beverage people who visit our community would like reading some of your posts, even though they are mainly industry professionals, they are still ‘foodies’. Let me know J



Neilesh

Maria said...

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Mark said...

I can smell the garlic cooking now. Please keep those recipes coming!

Juicer said...

Wow. This is really beautiful. I can smell the food cooking and I'm ready to eat.

Laura said...

Hi--I found your post interesting. Just some info regarding garlic: scapes are the flower stems of garlic that are harvested typically before they get woody and before the flowers bloom. Green garlic is the immature garlic plant, and usually harvested in mid-spring/early summer. Green garlic's leaves will be flat, not hollow as is the case for onions. Green garlic stalks typically do NOT have bulbous root ends, but look quite similar to scallions, except that their green leave sheaths are flat. Ramps, as you probably know, are wild leeks, in the lily family.