Garlic Scapes
Garlic scapes and squash blossoms from Gathering Together Farm.
Latin Name: Allium sativum
Spanish: flor de ajo
The flowering stalks of garlic and leeks are tender and flavorful morsels to be enjoyed during a small window of time each spring. With a tender zucchini-like texture and a buttery sweet garlic flavor, scapes can be sliced up into any sauté, roasted whole like asparagus, blended into a garlic scape pesto, or sliced raw into salads. You can pretty much toss them into anything.
In late spring and early summer, alliums all over send up their flowering stalks in an effort to complete their lifecycles after a long winter. If you harvest those stalks while they’re still tender, you get tender, juicy stalks. Garlic scapes can be curly or straight depending on the variety. They usually come on around the same time as the first zucchini of the season, and I love to sauté them both together (holding off on adding salt until almost done to allow the zucchini to brown) and serve them with eggs, fresh cheese, and chili oil in the morning for breakfast, with a good piece of buttered toast.
WHAT ARE GARLIC BULBILS?
The unopened flower bud at the end of each garlic scape is unique. Compared to other allium flowers like leeks that open up into a pompom of paper petals, garlic flower heads contain bulbils. Bulbils are tiny almost tooth-shaped cloves of garlic that are formed into the shape of the flower bud. Bulbils can be planted but will generally take an extra growing season to become a full head of garlic. They can also be eaten but take a bit of extra effort to peel depending on what stage they’re at when you harvest them. There are a few other alliums that have bulbils rather than flowers, and sometimes you’ll even see them sprout into a new plant while they’re still attached to the whole scape like tiny little wiggly garlic aliens.
Garlic scapes at Osmer Family Farm in Alsea, Oregon
