Monday, June 23, 2008

Garlic scapes

On Sunday we harvested many of our scapes. These are the shoots that the plants send up that contain the seed pods. They would flower just like a chive, but you prefer to not deplete the power of the bulb with reproducing ... so cut them off. And eat them. We use them just as we would chives. In salads, potatos, stirfries ... anywhere is fair game.





Growing around 150 head of garlic produces a lot of scapes. Hopefully around 150. Definitely more than you can eat in salads. So we make pesto with it. Which as far as I'm concerned is better than basil pesto. That's about 50 or so scapes I think. We cut them when they are just starting to fully curl around.





Chop them up. Half way up your processor with scapes, oil to almost cover that, I thinner layer of pine nuts, and p. regiano to taste.








Eat pasta until you burst, freeze the rest.

2 comments:

Sinfonian said...

What a great idea! Now you've got me wanting to grow hardnecks instead of softnecks (or whichever have scapes) next year! Thanks, I bet the sauce was awesome!

mark said...

We've grown both, and both have scapes. We've never differentiated between the two in consuming them so I have no idea if there is a difference.