What are these crazy-looking things?!
They’re very pretty and twisty, but I honestly had no idea what to make of them when I spotted them at our local farmer’s market last Saturday. It turns out that garlic scapes are a late spring/early-summer thing – they’re the part of the garlic that grows above ground, and that gets harvested so that the bulb below can mature more fully.
What do they taste like? Garlic. Except lighter and fresher and milder, so you can use lots of them.
How to use them? Apparently pretty much any way you’d use the regular stuff, but the subtle flavor means they’re extremely versatile: people pickle them, make them into pesto, blend them with white beans to make crostini, add them to soups and pastas, and even eat the younger (milder) ones raw.
I wanted to see what they tasted like in a pretty simple dish before I got crazy with it, so I thought I’d just chop a few up and throw them into the baby bok choy that I was already planning to sauté for dinner.
Oh yum.
Highly recommended.
