Garlic scapes

Today I picked up my Good Food Box. That's where you get a box of fruit and veges that's in season, and preferably organic or locally grown, and they buy it in bulk and portion it out to people so the cost stays low. We get it every 2 weeks.

It usually has some basics - lettuce, potatoes, onions and apples, and frequently something random like kale, mangoes or butternut pumpkin. Today's box had some random long curly green things that I initially thought were shallots... but then they were solid, like the stem of asparagus, only about as thick as a pencil, and they curled in a full loop and a half to the tip.

They also usually include a recipe if there's something random in the box, so I trusted that the mystery vege would be in this weeks recipe. Which it was :)

So here's my garlic scapes. They're basically the garlic flower stem that is cut off to encourage the plant to put more effort into growing the garlic bulb:

They have a very short season, because they apparently get hard and bitter after too long. The recipe just said to fry them in olive oil and add salt/pepper etc to season. So I chopped off the hard end bits, and cut them into about quarters so they'd fit in the pan. Here's my fried scapes, and just so you don't think I'm someone who takes pictures of every meal she eats, I've included the re-heated leftover hamburger from yesterday that I ate with them. Super gourmet!

SO GOOD! You know how you add garlic to things when you start to fry it to make the awesome garlic taste go through it? Well it's like I did that - but I didn't! The garlic taste in the scapes is much milder than the root, but fried and with salt is EPIC!

All that from garlic flower stems! Can you imagine a flower that smelled like garlic?? Mmmmmmmm yummmmmm.....