A new love: Garlic Scapes.

Early this afternoon, Will and I went to the Covent Garden Market in beautiful downtown London (Ontario, not England). We weren't looking for anything in particular, but happened upon a booth that had garlic scapes. Will had never heard of them, and I've only heard them a few times thanks to the Food Network.

According to wikipedia, Garlic scapes are removed in order to focus all the garlic's energy into bulb growth. The scapes are sold separately for cooking. Here is a pic I found through google images that shows the full garlic plant. Basically the scape is the stem.

So, upon purchasing them, I had to twitter and ask what on earth do I do with them? I couldn't pass them up, they were just $1 a bunch (I bought two). Stephanie, of Goth Socks fame responded and said she prefers them just sauteed. Other suggestions were to make a garlic scape pesto with walnuts, or to cut them up and cook them like green beans. I had other ideas.

Once we got home, I used my Google-Fu to find a recipe that sounded good. I found this beauty posted in a blog from Clagett Farm (which appears to be a really cool farm, I think I may have to bookmark their blog even though I'm not close to them at all!).

So, the above photo was my results. Let me tell you - if you've never had garlic scapes, go out and get some, STAT, and try this out! My only alterations to this recipe were the following:

- We pan-seared the haloumi cheese instead of grilling it, since we don't have a grill.
- We used red wine, since we don't have any white. We also just used less of it, but found we had to add a bit of white sugar while it was cooking down the tomatoes, since the sauce was a bit too wine-y.

Well, thats actually it for what we changed, we'd like to try it the original way still, so maybe next time... we may have to go back to the farmer's market next Thursday when its on again so we can grab some more. They're only available for a short time of the year since its basically the "waste" from growing garlic. Waste or no waste... YUM!

My darling husband also made super yummy falafels to go with dinner tonight, and some tahini sauce, as this was meant to be an "appetizer". I'd definitely make it as a main dish again though. Oh the good thing? I had to send Will out to get the haloumi at the grocery store after I found this recipe, so we have more haloumi to eat sometime over the next few days, AND he found some really great gourmet onion dip that was only $1.50 since it was being discontinued. Woohoo!

For anyone wontering about the taste of the scapes themselves... its sort of like a long green bean, but tastes garlicy. Not bitter and strong like raw garlic, but just a hint of garlic. They're really freakin' good. Try them, seriously.