But if the scape was allowed to curl around once or twice, the cut end may very well be woody and will have to be trimmed before it can be used, as with asparagus. If harvested young, the end will be appropriately tender. When shopping, the most important thing to look at is the broken end of the scape. Deeper breaks will emerge with a slurp, which is appropriate, as the deepest parts are as tender as sushi.įarmers markets will be full of scapes in the coming weeks. The deeper inside the plant it breaks, the more tender and juicy the end will be. Tug with sustained, gentle pressure until you hear the stalk snap off somewhere in the plant. You can snap or snip them, but I prefer to harvest scapes the way you’d pull a blade of grass to chew. Harvest the rest, because big bulbs are where it’s at. If you have some garlic in the ground, it’s worth letting a few plants flower just for the beautiful spectacle.īut just a few. And then, over a period of weeks, it will uncurl, stand up tall and bloom into a purple flower that’s shaped like an exploding firework. Unharvested, the scape will curl around twice like a cartoon pig’s tail. Like castrating a steer but with more chlorophyll. Growers pick the scapes so the plant will divert all of its energy into the growing bulb. I may not get to them now that I have new scapes to work with. They are soft, with green shoots in the middle. I still have a handful of bulbs left from last year’s harvest. As with all garlic, cooking will soften the flavor. So, rather than making scapes the star of a meal, I usually chop them into bite-sized pieces if I want the vegetable or mince them if I want the spice. Cooked whole, they resemble spears of coiled asparagus, a shape that is tricky to dunk into sauce and wrangle into your mouth with any dignity. These whimsical flowering stalks can act as a spice, a vegetable, an edible skewer or a decorative centerpiece. Now, with the solstice upon us, the garlic harvest begins, in the form of bunches of green, glorious, curly scapes. The plants are in the ground from fall until summer, leaving a short window between harvest and planting. And out in the field, there is never a dull moment. If you plant enough, you can eat it every day. I figured some of that land was garlic, and I knew from my plate that the scapes were up in northern China. As we rumbled through the outskirts of Beijing, more and more of the landscape was farmland. My plate contained chopped sections of plant stem, stir-fried with slabs of pork in a brown sauce. I decided to find a dining car and have some breakfast. We left the station early in the morning, crawling slowly behind factories, past thousands of people outside doing synchronized tai chi before work. It does not store any personal data.I once took a train from Beijing to Siberia. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly.
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