Garlic e-scapes and sun on your skin

... cooking with food treasures

This is the time of year when garlic, planted in fall and swelling into fat globes under the soil send up shoots that curl like musical notes with fat hopeful buds that wise garlic farmers, and greedy cooks, snip off. These are garlic scapes.

They will cost you a small fortune in stores and are treasures that good cooks wait for each year: first chefs wait for fiddleheads, which come from the ostrich fern, I have two in my garden that come up hopefully in spring and start wilting in the heat of June. I’m hoping that as an elderberry and spice bush mature, the ferns will have more shade to produce the fiddleheads I crave each May. In my region, the best come from cool Maine.

Fiddleheads and ramps tend to be foraged wild, although in my previous home ramps flourished along the driveway.

As stocks of fiddleheads start declining in the few specialist grocers that stock them, ramps start making their oval-leafed appearance with skinny white leggings like the frog and fish footmen in Alice in Wonderland. I’m not as fond of ramps, as I am of fiddleheads with their delicate asparagus-like taste. Ramps arrive at least a month before the first asparagus push their heads above the soil. My asparagus – which I often eat raw right after snapping them off their stems - are still offering spears, but because they are in their second year and I shouldn’t have given into temptation to eat any, I am now letting them turn into delicate fronds to ensure a strong, healthy crop next year.

After the fiddleheads, ramps, and asparagus have begun retreating and strengthening their core ahead of the next season’s harvest, come the garlic scapes just as sun is starting to turn the skin of gardeners brown. They appear as fava beans weigh down their stems; lettuce, arugula and Swiss chard try to outdo each other in voluptuous leaf displays, and before tomatoes have begun a powerful climb toward the sun.

In my allotment, the garlic scapes pushed past the peonies, sweet peas, roses, poppies, and fragrant seas of purple, bee-buzzing Lacy Phacelia, to create a symphony of musical notes – as I see them – across the garden. I snipped the scapes off in succession giving some to friends – it always surprises me how many have never tasted them before - or making garlic scape butter; a fantastic garlic scape pesto; or simply placing them on the grill, uncut; or chopped and added to pizza toppings, anything fried, or even to soups, including a delectable herb soup that I make.

Farmers and gardeners cut off the tops of garlic scapes with their beautiful, swooping curlicues before flowers emerge to ensure all the plant’s energy goes into the development of the bulbs that cooks like me crave. Last year I had so much garlic and onions from my garden that they lasted all through winter. This year I will probably start harvesting garlic and onions again in July when their leaves turn brown and droop. After that I affix string to each clove of garlic or onion and hang them up to dry in my study cupboard (no they don’t smell) before storing them in baskets for the winter – and now.

Garlic scapes have a more delicate taste than garlic, some are almost sweet.

Garlic scape butter

A pound of butter, or four sticks, softened to room temperature.

½ cup garlic scapes, bud and stalks, chopped finely, I snip them with scissors

2 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley

2 Tbsp chopped fresh basil (both of which I hope you nipped out onto your balcony or garden to snip)

1 Tbsp best quality extra virgin olive oil (I keep two types of olive oil at home, cheaper brands in large containers for cooking and then more expensive smaller bottles for salads or dishes like this)

Toss everything into a glass bowl and mix with a fork, it should all meld together quite easily. Get a length of clingwrap and lay out on your kitchen worktop and spoon even-sized portions onto it approximately the width you’d prefer your butter, then roll and tie at the ends. Freeze. Slice off what you need when desired. Great for a subtle, elegant garlic bread, on meats, fish, or vegetables.

Garlic Scapes Pesto

1lb garlic scapes (anything from 8-12, I frankly don’t bother weighing them, I just snip them straight into the food processor and add the rest of the ingredients)

1/2 cup Parmesan (grated or in flakes)

½ cup basil leaves

1 cup olive oil

Juice of one lemon and zested rind

¼ cup sunflower seeds

Ground black pepper

Snip the garlic scapes into the food processor and whiz to finely chop. Add the sunflower seeds and whiz again. Throw in the Parmesan and basil and whirr until everything is well incorporated – if it looks a little dry, drizzle in the olive oil. Once everything is well incorporated add the lemon juice and black pepper. Voila! I put some in a lidded glass jar in the fridge for cooking over the next week or two and then freeze most. It lasts for ages if you freeze.

I love about a dessertspoonful, sometimes less, mixed into a bowl of spaghetti or tagliatelle. You need nothing else, it is so delicious. If you want to add something, then a few flakes of poached salmon are sublime.