What's a Garlic Scape?

In my quest to educate the public in order to increase my sales, I feel that I need to bring the garlic scape into the populist's light of day. Thereby in this blog, I will attempt to answer the question, what is a garlic scape?

Simply put, a garlic scape is a young and ideally still tender flowering stalk of the garlic plant. For years now, garlic scapes have enjoyed popularity amongst the elusive foodie crowd. But now more and more, regular folks and off-the-grid types are getting into this under-utilized, near equal form of garlic.

To me, a scape looks incredibly similar to a curled green snake. As such, that first photo is called, "Darth Vader Under the Influence of Medusa," which is really just a silly way to highlight a $2 bundle of Old Husher's Garlic Scapes. The second photo up there is of the garlic scape in its natural environment. As folklore goes, it is said that you harvest a garlic scape after the weight of the flowering structure (the snake head thingy) weighs enough to curl the scape downward. Subsequently, the garlic scapes in the photo are ready to be harvested and sub-subsequently have been harvested since said photo has been taken.

Blah, blah, blah, enough of the history lesson already, what's a garlic scape taste like? Unsurprisingly, garlic scapes taste a lot like regular garlic, just a little bit mellower. That being said, if you were to make raw garlic scape and almond pesto (recipe to follow), you'd still be able to ward off vampires and future lovers for about six hours.

In terms of usage, the garlic scape is extremely versatile, just like its regular bulbed form. Often a puree is made and simply tossed in pasta. Or scapes can be chopped up and used in stir-frys or omelets. Garlic scape and almond pesto is downright amazing and can be used on sandwiches, as a chip-dip, as a pasta sauce and so forth. If you're getting a hankering of an inclination to get out the food processor and hear it go "v-r-r-r, v-r-r-r (with rolled r's like you took German in high school), then here's the recipe.

Garlic Scape and Almond

• 10 garlic scapes
• 1/3 to 1/2C parmeson
• 1/3C slivered almonds (toasted if you want to get crazy)
• olive oil to your preferred consistency (a 1/2C is a good start)
• Salt to taste from the sea or otherwise (this is for the people!)

Food processorize, or Blenderize, or Mortar and Pestle-ize (in which case chop everything up fairly fine first) all the above ingredients. Adding the olive oil slowly to desired consistency. Enjoy.

Thank you for reading Garlic Scape 101: What's a Garlic Scape?